Tears of the Weevil
by Trufreak89
Summary: Owen begins to show side effects from the Weevil's bite and Gwen has weevil problems of her own when she's abducted by the resident Torchwood weevil. GwenOwen ToshOFC Hints of JackIanto.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil(working title)

**Summary:** Unknown to the rest of Torchwood Gwen has developed a strange bond with the resident weevil, but Owen's link to it is even stranger.

**Rating: **PG

**A/N: **AU after 'Combat', with no Billis or anything else from episodes 12 and 13. Possible Gwen/Owen.

It was past midnight when Owen finally noticed the time. The others had all gone out for a drink, which he had declined to go for, leaving him alone in the Hub. Or so he thought. Looking up at the monitor displaying the cells he noticed a figure sitting on the floor by the cell housing the Weevil. Pale arms wrapped around long legs as the woman sat talking to the Weevil. He made his way down to the cells and stood quietly by the open door, watching his co-worker. Upon closer inspection he found that she was fast asleep, head lying against the cage. It didn't seem odd to him though, she'd been working flat out for weeks, he suspected it was to avoid Rhys. Of course he had no proof of this due to Gwen's inability to remain in the same room as him for more than five minutes.

What was strange to him was that she had fallen asleep sitting on the cold floor, her head lying against the cage. The weevil sat on the other side, it's expression docile and intrigued as it stared at the sleeping woman. Owen had never seen it so calm before. Sighing he bent down to pick Gwen up off the hard floor and move her to the couch upstairs. He paused as the weevil bore it's teeth and growled at him, it's mood had changed from docile to defensive. Owen growled back at it, and scooped his co-worker up in to his arms. There was only room for one alpha male and Owen wasn't going to be intimidated by a weevil with a crush on Gwen Cooper.

He set her down gently on to the couch, careful not to wake her. She'd developed dark circles under her eyes from sleep deprivation, so sleeping in the hub for a bit wasn't going to hurt her. Removing his leather jacket her lay it over her and returned to his desk, occasionally glancing over to check on his sleeping colleague. Eventually the peaceful silence and fatigue overcame him and he began to drift off at his desk.

He was startled awake by screaming. Gwen's screaming. He scrambled to his feet, ran out the door and in to the dimly lit corridor. What was he doing down by the cells? He heard Gwen scream again and decided it didn't matter how he had got there, he had to get back to her.

He ran up the stairs to where he'd left her and found Jack holding his pistol and glaring over at the couch. Owen's gaze followed his and found Gwen Cooper still lying down, but it was not just his coat that was on top of her. The weevil, affectionately named Janet by Jack, sat astride her, pinning her down with its body. "I think Janet may need renaming." Jack quipped. Owen didn't laugh. He was in no mood for Jack's twisted humour, not when Gwen's life was at risk. "Maybe Houdini would be more fitting...how the hell did it get out of the cage?" Owen touched his hand to his throbbing forehead, his fingers becoming covered in dry blood. What had happened to him?

"Jack!" Gwen hissed, trying to remain as motionless and calm as was humanly possible while being straddled by a vicious weevil.

"It's OK babe." Owen answered before Jack had a chance. "Just stay VERY still. Don't move or talk-"

"Do you say that to all the girls?" Gwen teased, coaxing a weak smile from Owen. It also spurred him on to move quicker towards the weevil spray in Jack's hands. Gwen was terrified, and her light hearted teasing was a way of dealing with her fear. Jack scowled as Owen took the spray and edged over to the Weevil. It sat perfectly still, staring down at Gwen with an intensity that Owen himself could relate to.

"Owen." Jack's voice behind him was low yet authoritative. He knew what the younger man was planning.  
"I've took it on before." Owen growled back at him, edging ever closer over to his pinned co-worker. He still had the bruises on his body to prove it. The weevil tore it's gaze away from the woman beneath it to glare at him. It emitted a low, feral growl. A warning for Owen to stay away from what it saw as its possession.

Owen took a tentative step forwards, only to be stopped by Gwen. "Don't!" She shouted, startling the alien on top of her. "Owen, just back off, you're annoying it." Jack yanked him back to a safer distance, leaving Gwen to deal with the weevil as she saw fit.

"Harper, let me up." She ordered, putting as much authority in her voice as she could. The weevil did as she asked and got to its feet, letting her up. Jack stared in amazement while Owen fumed.

"Harper?" He quizzed.

Gwen shrugged as she smoothed down her top. "It didn't seem to like Janet. I spent forty minutes going through names, and it wasn't until I said Harper it paid any attention. Maybe it just sounds like its real name?" Owen still sulked at her using his second name to address the beast that stood beside her.

"I don't suppose it'll be a good boy and get back in its cage?" Jack asked hopefully.

She turned to it and held out her hand cautiously. She'd spent a lot of time with it since they'd used it as bait, confiding in it with things she couldn't tell anyone about, like Torchwood and her feelings. It sat patiently in its cage and listened, like it was actually taking in her words and going to reply to her. If it ever did it was only in unintelligible grunts. They'd developed a bond, and a weird sort of trust that she couldn't explain.

She trusted it not to grab her and rip her throat out like she'd seen it do to a porter in the hospital, or bite her like it had Owen. It's leathery skin felt odd as it took her hand, deftly following her through the hub and down in to the cells. Jack and Owen stayed close with their weapons always trained on it. It simply walked back in to its cage and allowed Gwen to close the door. Owen laughed once the door was safely shut.

"If that's the best you can pull love it explains why you're with Rhys." He jumped as the weevil flung itself at the door of the cell, snarling as it stared at him.

Gwen smirked and her voice took on a teasing tone. "Careful Owen. I might just set him on you."

"Children." Jack interrupted their bickering, bringing their attention back to work. "We've got bigger things to worry about than Gwen's love life. How did Janet/Harper, whatever you want to call it, get out of a locked cell?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil(working title)

**Summary:** The truth about how the weevil got free surprises everyone.

**Rating: **PG

Gwen, Owen and Jack sat in stunned silence as the security footage showed them what had happened. Ten minutes after falling asleep at his desk Owen had stood up, his eyes still closed, and navigated his way through the building down to the cells where he had opened the weevil's cage. The cut on his head had been caused from the weevil shoving him in to the wall as it stormed past him in search of Gwen. "I swear I don't remember any of that!" Owen objected. Jack silently re-watched the footage, ignoring his team mates.

"Well you said the Weevils were telepathic, maybe he told you to do it-"

"They're only low level telepaths." Owen and Jack both pointed out. Frowning Gwen thought about the possibilities. "Well you were asleep, maybe it's easier for it to get in to your mind..." She trailed off at their sceptic glances. "At least I'm trying!"

Huffing at them both she grabbed hold of Owen's arm and dragged him over to the autopsy room where the medical supplies lay. Shoving him down on the autopsy table she glared as he took hold of her wrists, stopping her from moving away. "Easy Cooper. Didn't realize you liked it rough." She pulled away from him, storming over to where he kept the antiseptic. Pouring a generous amount on to a ball of cotton wool she slapped it over his cut. He grunted but let out no cries of pain. "Nice bed-side manner." She ignored his grumbling and wiped the small cut above his eye. He was lucky it wouldn't need stitches. She didn't trust herself with sharp objects around Owen Harper.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" He grinned as he lifted his T-shirt off over his head.  
"You tell me?" He'd expected a reaction. Maybe for her eyes to dart hungrily over his toned body, but not for them to go wide and her mouth to hang open. Had he suddenly grown a third nipple he didn't know about? "I know it's a much better sight than Rhys but -"

"Jack!" Gwen screamed for their leader and fountain of knowledge, who came running at hearing his employee scream for the second time that night. She tilted Owen's head to the side so that Jack could see what she had noticed moments earlier.

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?" Owen repeated, unaware of what the panic was about. "What the hell do you mean uh-oh?"

Staring in to the mirror Owen noticed for the first time that the bite-mark from the Weevil wasn't just a mix of angry purple and blue bruising, it held a disguised rash.

"It's probably just MRSA!" He argued as Jack ordered him to run various medical tests on himself and refused to leave him alone until they found out what it was.

"Owen, you're one of the few people in history to have survived a weevil attack, and now said weevil is getting you to set it loose. We have no idea what its bite could do to humans, or what kind of control it could have over you!"

Gwen left them to it and returned to the cell that housed Harper. Standing in front of the alien that had formed a strange connection with her she sighed.

"Is Owen going to be all right?" It looked at her with its large docile eyes, the way it always looked at her. She knew she would get no answers from the weevil, but she continued to question it anyway. "What do you want? Why go to so much trouble to get let out and just walk back in there because I said so? What's so special about me." She shuddered as a slow grin spread over the weevil's face. It held an all knowing look, which mixed with it's toothy grin, disturbed her more than watching it tear a man's throat apart.

Owen and Jack found nothing wrong with him. He was in tip top condition besides the cut above his eye and the rash and the bruising. Owen dismissed it as a simple rash and put it down to changing his aftershave. After telling Ianto and Tosh about the previous night's occurrence over a fresh cup of Ianto's morning coffee they eventually forgot about the rash, and the weevil as they moved on to the day's cases that needed attention. Gwen avoided visiting the weevil, she refused to refer to it by the name she had given it any more, and gradually life went on.

It wasn't until a weak later that things erupted again. While at the wheel of the SUV, Owen began to feel light headed and dizzy. He blinked trying to clear his vision of blurry white dots. He was about to mention to the others that he didn't feel fit to drive when they're collective screams jolted his attention to what they all saw. A large old tree that was drawing closer. What was a tree doing in the middle of the road? Realization dawned on Owen too late as they hurtled down the hill towards the impending impact with the tree's thick bark. He wasn't on the road any more.

"Bugger."

Owen woke to the sound of the monotonous beeping and humming of machines. His entire body felt stiff and cold. Except for his hand. He felt a comforting warm weight on it. Forcing his eyes to open fully he looked down to where Gwen Cooper lay with her head on his hospital bed, sleeping peacefully with her hand covering his.

Guilt tore at him as he remembered why he was in a hospital bed with annoying machines beeping around him. Gwen's eyes fluttered open as he shifted his weight on the bed. "Morning gorgeous." He managed to choke out from his dry throat. She smiled, the sort of dazed, not all with it smile she often wore when she woke up beside him. She usually lost it pretty quickly after the guilt set in. This time however, it remained fixed in place.

"Not quite." Her watch flashed four AM. "How you feeling?"

"Like I went head first in to a tree."

"Well funnily enough..." She yawned half way through her sentence. "Sorry, haven't slept much. You've been out almost three days." Owen could see she was exhausted and was willing to bet she'd barely left his side in those three days. He wasn't feeling overly energetic either.

"It's bloody freezing in here." He grumbled. The mischievous twinkle returned to his eye. "How about keeping me warm?" He'd expected her to frown or blush, but she was obviously cold herself sitting in the hospital room wearing only a T-shirt. Slipping off her shoes she slipped under the covers beside him, careful not to press against him, for fear of hurting him. She was being oddly nice to him.

"Must be my lucky night." He teased, placing a protective arm around her waist, pulling her in tightly against him. "How about we work on your bedside manner?"

"Watch it Harper!" He smirked. Same old Gwen.

When he regained conciousness again the midday sun was streaming through the window beside his bed, forcing him to squint. Someone in the room shuffled about and the blinds were drawn over, allowing some light in the room but keeping the sun's glare out of his eyes. "How are you feeling?" Tosh's voice suddenly caused him to be wide awake. His head jerked from the empty space of bed beside him to the equally empty chair on the opposite side of where Tosh sat. "She's just gone home to get a change of clothes and a shower." Toshiko explained, knowing full well who he was looking for. She'd been the one to wake Gwen up a few minutes before Jack had entered the room.

Owen settled back down, rubbing at his tired eyes. "So what's the damage?" Tosh sat cradling her broken wrist.

"Ianto's got a few cuts and bruises, Jack hasn't got a scratch on him, I've broke my wrist and Gwen's fine. She passed out after the crash, you got her out before you blacked out too. You've been unconscious three days, you don't seem to be hurt though, just some bruising." He winced as he pulled himself up in to a sitting position. He was pretty sure Gwen had been lying on the bruising Tosh had mentioned. "What happened Owen?"

He shrugged, grimacing as pain shot through his bruised side. "I dunno. One minute I was fine, the next I had the hangover from hell...and no I hadn't been drinking." his eyes darkened as he thought back to the events in the car. Toshiko noticed the change in him.

"Owen?"

"I heard it." His voice was low and close to a growl. "It was calling to me, telling me to take her to it-"

"Take who were?"

His attention snapped to his co-worker, his eyes wide with with terror. "The weevil. The weevil was telling me to take Gwen to it."


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil(working title)

**Summary:** The truth about how the weevil got free surprises everyone.

**Rating: **PG

**A/N: **Short update as I'm trying to do coursework and write fanfic at the same time ;

"Actually coming home tonight?" Rhys stood, arms crossed and face in a deep scowl, blocking her from getting to the front door.

"A mate's in hospital." Since when had she thought of Owen as a mate? "She hasn't got any family so I'm keeping her company. She was in a car crash a few days ago, only woke up last night."

He accepted her answer and let her go. A little too easily. All the way to the hospital she found him following her, thinking she hadn't seen him as he dived in shops or turned away. Normally she would have been furious at his distrustfulness, but it wasn't like she was entirely innocent, and if he wanted to waste his morning following her than that was up to him. She got to the ward Owen was on, and glanced behind her as Rhys hung back, waiting to see what room she was going to. She hurried round the corner and down in to the stairwell, deciding to go to the canteen for a spot of breakfast while Rhys had fun playing hide and seek.

The Welshman wandered up and down the ward looking for any sign of his girlfriend. He bumped in to a young Japanese woman outside one of the rooms. She was closing the door silently as he knocked in to her. "Oh, sorry." He smiled warmly. The woman smiled back politely. "I don't suppose you've seen my girlfriend have you? She's a little taller than you with dark black hair-"

"Gwen?" Something told Toshiko the man in front of her was Rhys. "She left this morning to go home and freshen up. She's been by Owen's bed since the crash."

"Owen?" Rhys' anger began to flare. "Funny name for a girl."

Realising she'd put her foot in it she quickly tried to rectify the situation. "Her name's Janet Owen. We all call her Owen." He seemed to accept the explanation but still looked sceptical. Toshiko jumped as the door behind her opened and Owen's head popped out.

"Could you keep it down out here please? My patient needs her rest."

"Yes Dr. Harper." She had to suppress as grin at his daring. He stood behind the door, still attached to a morphine drip and wearing nothing but a hospital gown and the smile on his face.

Rhys gave the Japanese woman a quick goodbye and scurried off home. Both Owen and Tosh were still in fits of laughter as Gwen walked through the door. "What's so funny?" They looked from Gwen to each other and their laughter increased.

The three of them sat making small talk until Tosh left, saying she had work to do, leaving Owen and Gwen alone.

"Maybe you should go?" Owen's random suggestion surprised her. He saw the hurt in her eyes at being shoved out and faked a large yawn. "I'm really knackered." An impish grin spread over Gwen's lips as she got to her feet.  
"Don't want some company in there again then?" Owen would have had her in the bed and undressed before she could even finish the sentence, but he didn't feel comfortable around her any more. He felt like he was putting her in danger just being around her. The weevil wanted her and it was trying to use him to get what it wanted. Toshiko and Jack were going to work on it, check out whether it was the weevil or just his imagination, but until he knew for certain he wasn't a danger to her, he couldn't have her on her own.

"Maybe another time yeah?" Her expression fell. "Look, if you don't want to go back to lover-boy, take my keys. Stay over while I'm in here...feed the cat?" She frowned as she took his keys from out of the bedside cabinet.

"You don't have a cat."

"Then feed someone else's! Just bring me some stuff in tomorrow, I'm getting discharged with a clean bill of health." She agreed and after collecting her things she kissed his forehead. Pulling her back down he pressed his lips to hers, kissing her as though they were more than just an occasional distraction to one another.  
"Look after yourself babe."


	4. Chapter 4

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** As Gwen spends more time with him, Owen becomes increasingly concerned for her safety.

**Rating: **PG

"Where's Tosh?" It hadn't been the first thing she'd been expecting after walking in to Owen's room the next morning. He obviously realised that and added. "She did some tests to see why I passed out, kinda anxious for them." Gwen accepted the explanation and said no more about it. She'd brought his clothes in for him and he was due to be discharged within the hour.

The drive to his flat was quiet and tense. Owen refused to drive his car home, allowing Gwen to drive instead, something of a rarity for him. He was paranoid that the Weevil would order him to take Gwen to it. Or was he just being delusional? Had the crash simply effected his memory of what had happened?

"Owen?" He'd been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't realised the car had stopped. He flashed her a reassuring smile and followed her up to his apartment. There were no signs that she'd stayed the night, except for the place had been cleaned and his bed linen changed.

"Do you want some lunch?" She called from his kitchen where she was already making coffee. He stood watching her, a small smirk on his face. "What?"

"You're supposed to be in my bed not my kitchen." She rolled her eyes at him and shoved him over to his sofa before returning to the kitchen. It took him all day, after a movie marathon and a disastrous attempt by Gwen to cook lasagne, to finally get her in to his bed. She'd protested at first as he'd dragged her to his room, kissing her neck in a teasingly light fashion. She'd made excuses about Rhys, he'd quickly pointed out if she wanted to be with Rhys she wouldn't have spent the night in his apartment. Finally, as he knew she would, she relented.

And so at almost two in the morning he lay with her cuddled in to him, fast asleep. As tired as he was he fought his sleep. He didn't trust himself being unconscious around Gwen. Not if the weevil really could control him.

Gwen screamed, causing his eyes to spring open. When had he closed them? He looked around his room and found it empty, Gwen wasn't there. Leaving his bed he opened his bedroom door and found himself in the Hub. He wasn't supposed to be there. "Better hurry up Owen." Tosh sat beside Ianto, neither of them reacting to Gwen's frantic screaming. How couldn't they hear it? He carried on, running through the Hub, until he burst through in to the cells. Gwen was inside the weevil's cage, her cold eyes wide open , her skin paler than usual. She was dead.

"Too late." There was no Weevil inside the cage, only a grinning Jack. Owen released a low feral growl before lunging at him in a fit of rage.

"Owen!" His eyes snapped open for a second time. He found Gwen leaning over him, eyes wide with concern, but full of life. He took hold of her in his arms and clung to her tightly. He couldn't shake the images of her pale lifeless body out of his mind. "Shhhh. You were just having a bad dream." She soothed, running her fingers through his hair. He was determined not to fall asleep again, and he pretty much guaranteed he wouldn't after seeing Gwen's lifeless form. Once again he was wrong.

This time his dream was far less intense. He dreamt he was driving along the quiet streets of Cardiff, the clock on the dashboard told him it was four in the morning, which explained while there was no one around. He found himself stopping at the hospital and entering through the A&E department. There were a few patients and hospital staff knocking around but none of them paid him any attention. He climbed a set of stairs, forced his way through a close off area and walked silently down a long corridor. At the end he paused. He recognised the place he was in but couldn't remember ever being there.

He walked in to a small room, one that would probably be a private room like the one he'd been in earlier that day, once it was finished being decorated. He stared at a section of the wall that stood out to him. It was just like the other three walls, a plain white, but for some reason he knew this one was different.

Without warning his fist smashed in to the wall, it turned out to be plasterboard which splintered from the force of his punch. Tearing away at the remains of the wall he found a small metal object. It was completely smooth, shaped liked a pebble and a deep metallic green in colour, it could have been a piece of modern art that deserved to be in some gallery, but it wasn't art. It wasn't human. It radiated power. It had obviously been hidden in the wall before it had been finished, remaining hidden from the builders. He ran his hand over it, shivering as he felt the objects power coarse through his veins. As he pocketed the item he swore he'd never eat cheese before bed again.

The light shone in at him, causing him to stir. He stretched his stiff muscles only to have his foot connect with something heavy. Opening his eyes he found himself staring at one of the rear doors of his car. He lay spread on the back seat with no memory of how he'd ended up there. Had he left his flat to keep Gwen safe? Sitting up he expected to see the familiar site of his apartment block. His confusion increased as he found himself in the hospital car park. He took out his mobile to check the time and found it was almost midday and he'd had four missed calls from Gwen. He sighed. "It's gonna be one of those days."


	5. Chapter 5

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** The extent of Owen's 'problems' is revealed and it worries the team.

**Rating: **PG

"Where the hell have you been?" Gwen demanded to know the second he stepped in to the hub. "I've been worried sick!" He felt guilty at how shaken she looked, but he had no idea why he'd left her in the middle of the night.

"I think I was sleep walking. Well sleep driving. I woke up at the hospital." He offered his only explanation. Upon seeing Gwen's eyes widen in horror he added. "I'm fine. I woke up in the car park."

"Everything alright?" Jack appeared behind Gwen, the same smile on his face he'd worn in Owen's nightmare. He suppressed the urge to shudder and forced himself to smile.

"Every thing's fine boss." He lied, thankful that Gwen wasn't objecting. He doubted she'd feel like explaining to Jack or the others that he'd went missing during the night for fear it would lead to the need to explain how she knew he'd gone missing from his bed. She waited the majority of the afternoon, after investigating a false UFO sighting in Tesco's car park, to get him on his own.

"What's really going on Owen? The crash, the sleepwalking...avoiding me like I've got the plague." As she sat on his desk, staring down at him as he sulked in his chair he finally gave up the pretence that everything was fine. He looked so sad and terrified as he began to explain. "I can hear it Gwen. The weevil. Ever since that night it escaped it's always been in my head when I'm here...this little nagging voice, getting louder and louder...and then it stopped being just at work, I hear it when I'm driving home, in my flat, in nightclubs...nothing stops it, and it keeps saying the same thing over and over again."

"Tell me." Gwen urged, her hand reached for his until his gaze darted up at her. It was different. Darker. Resolute. "It wants you Gwen. And it won't leave me alone till it gets you."

Toshiko and Jack came running from his office as they heard a large groan followed by a loud thump. Owen lay unconscious on the floor by his desk, with Gwen standing over him holding a heavy looking folder of paperwork. She looked from Owen to the others and stammered. "He tried to attack me! He said the weevil told him too." Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stop the headache that he was quickly developing.

"So it's not just when he's asleep any more? This is getting serious." Gwen shot him a look, questioning how it wasn't classed as serious beforehand. "Tosh, get Ianto to help you move Owen to one of the cells...far away from the weevil! Gwen, you're coming with me. I think it's time we had a little chat with our guest."

As usual the weevil stood docile as Gwen stood before it. It had been over a week since she'd last been anywhere near it. It cocked its head from one side to the other, as though contemplating why Owen wasn't there handing her other. Did it know the effect it was having on him? Did weevil intelligence and telepathy really have the ability to control someone? Why hadn't it just effected Gwen instead? "It may have injected something in to Owen through the bite, a parasite maybe?" It was as though Jack had read her mind. "I'll be totally honest with you though Gwen, I've never seen a weevil show any signs of intelligence or response to communication. I don't think they're capable of rational thought. And I don't think they're capable of sending men insane just from a bite."

"_Too late Owen." The other three chorused as they all stood sombrely in black. The rain lashed against their tired forms, soaking them to the bone, just as it was doing to him. His eyes swept past them to the catacomb that lay open. They were inside the Torchwood morgue and the missing Torchwod member lay in it. Dressed in simple black, eyes closed peacefully, it would be easy to mistake her for being asleep, had she not been lying in a morgue of course.  
"You should have give her up pal." Jack stood smirking again. "Hell at least with the weevil she'd have a fighting chance." _

"_What did you do to her?" His voice wasn't nearly as angry enough as he'd like, and although he wanted to strangle all signs of life out of Jack's body, he didn't have the energy. He'd been fighting off the weevil's suggestions for weeks, working flat out to drown it out of his head, and he couldn't keep it up. He could barely hold himself up never mind attack Jack. _

"_She knew too much about me." He replied nonchalantly, as though it were obvious justification for murder. "Can't have that now can we?" _

His eyes jerked open, jolted awake by his own screaming. Searching his surroundings he found himself once again questioning where he was. It took a few moments for his brain to register that someone was talking to him. Tosh. "Calm down Owen. You're OK. You went to attack Gwen, so she had to knock you out-"

"Gwen!" He threw himself at the door of the cell, his body connecting painfully with the reinforced glass. "She's in trouble! Jack's going to kill her!" Toshiko looked confused by his outburst. "It wasn't the blood weevil doing this to me! It couldn't have been, it's not advanced enough, but Jack, Captain Mysterious, he could do it. Gwen knows to much about him, so he's trying to send me crazy so I'll off her for him! He's trying to get rid of us both! Don't you get it!"

When the rest of the team finally met up in the boardroom Toshiko was wiping away tears as Gwen sat sullenly in her chair, staring in to space. After sharing what they all knew, they'd come to the conclusion that either Owen had cracked up from the pressure of working for Torchwood for so long, or the weevil was doing it to him. "Why would the weevil want Gwen?" Jack asked the question that no one had dared answer, because the answer was obvious. It wouldn't. She was just another human. Weevils didn't interact with any humans, they couldn't develop bonds with a human, in the wild they fled them or killed them and they certainly didn't use telepathic suggestions to get said human. "And why would Owen?" His words were not meant to sound as sharp or accusing as they did but they cut deep in to her defences. She was more than partly to blame for Owen going off the deep end.


	6. Chapter 6

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Owen's mental state deteriorates and he's convinced there's only one way to 'save' Gwen.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"_Why are you doing this to me?" The weevil stood with its back to him, ignoring his questions. "What do you want with Gwen? God damn it! Tell me!" He took hold of its shoulder, spinning it around to face him. The grinning face of Jack Harkness stared back at him. _

"_She's mine Owen." _

He was covered in a cold sweat as he pulled himself to his feet. His damp shirt clung to his back as he walked over to the door. Placing his head on the cool glass he sighed. He was no longer sure what Jack wanted with Gwen, all he knew was that whether it was to murder her or steal her from him, he wouldn't let it happen.

"How the hell did this happen?" Jack barked, staring in astonishment at the hole in the glass wall. "A weevil can't make a dent in one of these things and yet Owen can smash through one?"

"It's a sign of how bad his psychosis is. His need to have Gwen seems to have overshadowed everything else, his brain was obviously so fixed on getting to her that it released the safety limits on how far he could push his body, I doubt he'd even have registered the pain in his fists."

"The log shows the lift was used five minutes ago." Ianto informed them from the doorway.

"Great so we now have a psychotic-Gwen-obsessed Owen running around Cardiff."

"Not exactly." Ianto grunted as Owen appeared behind him and brought his gun down against the back of his head. "Everything I need is right here Jack. Gwen, the weevil and a locked room to keep you the hell away from Gwen."

"Owen!" Jack appealed to him as he closed the door. "How the hell is the weevil going to protect Gwen?" He paused, his hand on the bolt.

"I don't know." He answered honestly. "But it told me it will. I'm sorry Jack, but I can't let you hurt her." He slammed the bolt shut, trapping them inside while he searched for the missing team member.

He found her slumped over her desk, staring at the screen saver of her computer. He watched her for a few minutes before making his move. "Gwen!" He ran to her workstation, feigning being out of breath. "The weevil escaped. You've got to come with me." He grabbed her hand before she could protest and picked up his gun from his desk on the way past.

"Owen? Why are we going this way?" She panted, trying to keep up with his pace. He was frantic and edgy, looking around every few seconds as they ran deep in to the bowls of Torchwood; towards the cells.

"Jack told me to put you in one of the cells to keep you out of that things way." They came to an abrupt halt as they reached one of the many rooms filled with cages for confining aliens. Had she been paying attention to where they'd ran she would have realised which particular room they were going in to. He slammed the door shut behind her. She jumped. Not because of the bang, but what was staring at her. From behind the screen confining it stood the weevil. Safely locked in the cage. "I'm sorry Gwen. It's for your own good." She turned to find him aiming his gun at her. "I don't want him to get you."

"Who?" Her head was spinning. Why was Owen giving her to the thing her was supposedly protecting her from?

"Jack."

Up until then she had refused to accept that he had lost it, and that whatever was going on wasn't weevil or alien induced. Staring at him, she could see the confusion and madness within him. She doubted even he understood his own logic, he just refused to back down from it. Even while being insane he was a stubborn git.

"Let her go Owen." Jack stood in the open doorway with Toshiko and Ianto behind him. Everyone in the room looked to the pistol in his hands. "I don't want to have to shoot you, but there's no way you're letting that weevil out."

A slow, almost manic, grin spread over the younger man's face. "Oh I'm not letting it out Jack." He reached for the controls to open the door. "It wants Gwen inside."

"Owen! Don't you dare open that door!" Jack barked, his gaze dark. Owen shifted his position so that his arm was wrapped around Gwen's waist, his gun pushing slightly in to her abdomen, using her as a human shield.

"I won't let him hurt you." He whimpered in her ear. "I have to save you." She was too scared to respond. She was either about to be shoved in a cage with a weevil or shot if Jack decided to stop Owen before he could open the door. Owen could feel her body against him, tense and shaking. Absently he stroked her cheek, comforting her in a way that suggested he was more than just a recurring one night stand to him. "It'll protect you. It promised." Spinning her around he crushed his lips to hers. The last kiss of a dying man, or woman in her case. The hand not holding the gun slammed against the release button, opening the cell door.

Jack switched from aiming at Owen to the weevil. It stood cautiously in its cage, watching the situation unfold. Something small and metal was shoved in to Gwen's pocket before she was pushed backwards, in to the waiting arms of the weevil. Gwen watched in horror as, almost in slow motion, Jack tried to get to the cage, only to have Owen tackle him to the ground, knocking his pistol from his hand. Ianto and Toshiko moved towards the cage but it was too late. The weevil pulled the object from Gwen's pocket, and holding it flat in its palm, forced her hand on to the top of it. Had it sighed? She could of swore it had let out a sigh of relief.

The green metallic quickly changed to a deep, blood red colour, growing ever lighter as nanoseconds went by. Everyone in the room clamped their eyes shut, except Jack. He forced his eyes to stay open, ignoring the pain of the light blinding him. When the light disappeared in an instant the others opened their eyes again to find Jack slumped on his knees, eyes wide and skin pale. "They just...vanished."

Gwen dropped to her knees as the weevil collapsed to the ground behind her. "Welcome back." She looked up and found Jack grinning at her. She and the weevil were in the middle of the boardroom table.

"What's going on?" Gwen mumbled, her throat dry and her vision still blurry from the light.

"How are you feeling?" He shook his head as Gwen went to answer. "I was talking to him." He pointed behind her. She turned to look at the weevil behind her. The changing weevil.

It lay on its back, spread eagled with its eyes closed, panting as though in pain. It's face contorted in agony and its back arched. It was in pain. Its claws began to retract in to its hands, leaving fingers. Its hair darkened and grew and its flesh paled. Once the transformation was over it slumped back on to the desk, exhausted and nearly unconscious.

"What the hell is going on?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** The weevil's intentions, and Jack's part in them, are finally explained.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Gwen stood in between Jack and the table where the weevil had laid. "Anyone ever told you it's rude to stare?" The voice was hoarse and shaky, but still unmistakable. She had watched with wide, disbelieving eyes as the weevil had transformed right in front of her and now it was talking to her, as though nothing had happened.

"O-Owen?" She finally choked out, tensing as she felt Jack behind her. "Jack what the hell is going on?" She sat down in one of the chairs as a wave of dizziness spread over her and her legs felt like giving way. Jack knelt beside her, holding her hand and giving her one of his reassuring smiles.  
"I promise I'll explain everything soon Gwen. You just need to rest for a minute." He looked up at Owen still lying on the boardroom table and sighed. He had a feeling she'd need a stiff drink after he'd finished explaining what was going on.

They both looked up as a young blonde woman entered the room and went to Owen's side. Upon seeing her he sat up and threw his arms around her, pulling her in tightly. "I missed you." His voice sounded less gruff, as though it had finished adjusting to his human throat. The girl smiled warmly as she held him tightly.

"How long?" Jack queried. Owen pulled away from the blonde.

"Six months, give or take." He answered, his gaze travelling to Gwen. "Got in to Torchwood the same day Gwen arrived. Took 'Janet's' place in the hospital and waited for the right time." Jack nodded, a solemn expression replacing his usual grin.

"Smart move. You'll be happy to know it's only been three days here." As quick as a flash his smile returned. "How about you go get yourself a full physical and a psyche test and I'll update Gwen?" The younger man looked apprehensive about leaving her. "Owen, you've been in weevil form for six months straight, you need to get checked out."

"Make sure I'm still human enough?" He asked, bitterness marring his eyes. With the blonde's help he left the room on shaky legs.

Jack took a seat beside Gwen and began his explanation. "I'm not exactly going to be able to bring you up to speed in one night, but here's the basics. We used alien technology to send Owen back to your time, 2007, to get you because we need your help-"

"You sent Owen back in time? Dressed as a weevil?"

"Not dressed as. He is a weevil. That brings us on to the reason we sent him back. The weevils that fell through the rift in your time, they didn't fall through space, just time. They come from earth." Seeing she was about to interrupt again Jack continued on. "Save the questions till the end, it'll be quicker OK? To cut a long story short weevils are sort of evolved humans. There was a meteor crash to earth in early 2008. It carried some alien disease of some sort and it effected one human, the carrier, the carrier bit someone, and within a month sixty-eight percent of Britain's population were turned. If they were all like Owen and retained their humanity everything would be peachy...but only 2 percent of them stay remotely human, the rest just become the weevils you know." He waited for her questions, but she simply sat quietly taking it all in. Finally she asked the question he had been dreading.  
"Where do I fit in to all of this? Why did you need me? Why can't the me from now help-" She fell silent as realisation dawned on her. "What happened to me?"

"I'm sorry but I can't tell you that." Jack answered, grimacing at the memories. "You were bit by a weevil early on. It had no effect on you. Owen was looking for a cure using your blood before you died. We had to go back and get you-"

"Why not save me? Why 2007?"

He'd been asked the same thing by Owen and Toshiko when he'd first shown them the alien technology. "It's not exactly accurate. I just had to program it for early 2008 and hope for the best. If we can find a cure, and send you back in time then we can stop millions of people from dying Gwen, not including the lives of innocent human beings that were turned to weevils. We had to take you before the meteor crash, and we have to get you back before it too."

"It's strange seeing Gwen again." Lacey, the blonde muttered as she handed Owen a fresh set of clothes to change in to. He grunted in response, she knew it had nothing to do with being a weevil for six months straight. Physically he was fine, and mentally, well he was still Owen and still predominantly human. He was one of the two percent who were lucky enough to be able to keep their rational thought and maintain their human form.

"She's not our Gwen though is she? He barked as he pulled of the purple suit he'd been wearing for too long, he'd been dying to put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt for months. "She wasn't here for the outbreak, she doesn't know what it's like to live in this world...She's not the girl I watched die a few weeks ago-" Jack cleared his throat, catching Owen and Lacy's attention. Gwen stood beside him. Shaking his head he stormed off past them, refusing to even look her.

"Hi." The blonde woman held out her hand with a cheerful smile. "I'm Lacey. You haven't met me yet." The older woman returned her smile and shook her hand.  
"Nice to meet you. So where's Ianto and Tosh?" She watched their faces fall. "Jack?"

"Ianto's been dead over a year now, died in '09."

"Oh god, I'm so sorry. What about Tosh?"

This time Lacey spoke, the young blonde looked barely out of her teens and yet the wisdom and burden that came from being part of Torchwood could already be seen in her pale blue eyes. How long had she been there? "Tosh wasn't so lucky."


	8. Chapter 8

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** The weevil's intentions, and Jack's part in them, are finally explained.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Toshiko Sato was no longer the woman she had once been. Her brilliant technological mind had been slowly engulfed with madness. She had once been able to take apart and reassemble countless alien artefacts that would have baffled the world's leading scientists, but now it was considered a good day is she remembered who everyone was, including herself.

She sat on the floor of her room, idly running a pencil over a sheet of paper, sketching out random contorted lines that could easily resemble the chaos in her mind. "She's getting worse." Jack sighed, his breath tickling Gwen's neck as she leant over the security monitor. "She hasn't been able to live on her own in four months, we had to set up a makeshift apartment in Torchwood for her-"

"I guess I just couldn't cope, huh Jack?" Lacey shoved past him carrying a stack of files, her expression grim. Gwen shot her boss a quizzical look.

"Tosh and Lacey are pretty close. Lacey lived with her, but once she started losing it we had to bring her here for her own good. Lacey was trying her best to look after her on her own, but it's too much of a burden for one kid, she almost wore herself out." Gwen absently ran a finger over the image of her former colleague. How could this have happened to Toshiko? Logical, level headed Tosh who hated chaos and despised disorder? She sat on the floor, still in her pyjamas with her hair haphazardly shoved up, lose strands falling in to her eyes.

"How did it happen? Did she get sick? Have an accident?"

"She was tortured." She spun around to find Owen leaning casually against his desk. "By scared little men who can't handle things being different." His voice was almost a growl, his eyes dark and brooding. He held no trace of his trademark jack the lad attitude, no witty comments or playful banter. Tosh had lost her mind and her independence and on the rare occasion she'd seen the future Jack grin it had been as fake as the smiles Ianto had given them all after Lisa's death. Ianto. Poor Ianto. Was he with Lisa now? Or was Susie right? Was there nothing after this life? She shuddered at the thought and sent a silent prayer that there was something; and Ianto was happy there.

"So, are we going to make this cure or not?" Seeing the pain and loss on all of their faces and understanding why it was there had spurred her on. Her natural desire to help people was kicking in to over drive. She had to make the world right. For Owen's lost wit, Jack's grin, Toshiko's sanity, and Ianto's life. She frowned as Owen laughed at her. Actually laughed at her determination!

"Good one sweetheart. I'll just go invent the cure for cancer while I'm at it yeah?" Although he was laughing she could hear how it hollow it was, he wasn't laughing with mirth, he was laughing so he wouldn't scream in frustration and anger. "Two **bloody** years me and Gwen were working on finding a cure. And now she's gone, and what hope has humanity got left? We don't know if her blood's even the same as it was now. There are millions of things that could have changed it before we started testing for the cure. She could be worthless." He stormed off, hands shoved in to his pockets and shoulders hunched. Jack shot her a sympathetic smile, but still forced all the same.

"Don't take it too personally, Owen hasn't been right since you died, well before then really, what with the whole being a weevil thing, but he really went off the deep end without you. I doubt being forced to be around you for six months, knowing it wasn't the Gwen from his time, didn't really help him deal with it."

Gwen wasn't entirely sure where forcing Owen to put her up in his spare room came in to helping him deal with the Gwen he'd known for three years being dead. She'd expected him to object, shout and argue, but he'd merely sighed and grabbed his jacket, telling her to meet him in his car. He couldn't even be bothered to whine any more. Jack was right. He was a changed man.

As he took the wrong turning to his flat, a small almost genuine smirk appeared on his face. "How about a drink? If Jack think being stuck in the past for months can make me mental he obviously hasn't seen my try and be tee-total for six months." She let a small smile touch her lips. Maybe he hadn't changed so much.

He took her to a small bar she'd never been in before, telling her that taking her in to one of the regulars they'd haunted would probably be a bad idea, as as far as the staff were concerned she would be haunting the place. They took a seat by the bar and sat in awkward silence as they each cradled their drinks. "So how did it happen? The weevils I mean." He shot a glare at her as the others around them began murmuring and casting them curious glances.

"Drink up. There's a bottle of vodka back at...my place." He hurried her out of the club, constantly looking behind them as they left. Once they were safely in the car and on the way to his flat he explained. "Just for the record love, you don't start a conversation about weevils in the middle of a crowded bar."

"Why not?" Gwen quizzed. "Jack said that sixty something percent of Britain's population are weevils-"

"It's more like seventy now." Owen snapped. It explained the lack of people and traffic down by the bay on a Saturday night. "People don't talk about weevils. They let the government round them up and exterminate them without mumbling a word. No one talks about them any more. And any one who does looks pretty suspicious. If they find out we're Torchwood, we're as good as dead."

Gwen sat in Owen's living room, his flat looked more or less how it had in her time, minimalistic and not lived in. There had been some pictures lying around but he'd quickly removed them before she could see them. Perhaps Jack had ordered him to take them down as they told too much about the future? She held the glass, containing a generous amount of vodka, against her lips, feeling the large mouthful she'd taken burning a path down her throat. "Why would we be killed if people knew we were Torchwood?" Owen looked up from his glass, an absent look on his face as though he'd been somewhere else.

"Because they think it's our fault that the weevils were created." He answered, pausing for a minute he added. "And they're right; It was my fault."


	9. Chapter 9

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Everyone has their burdens.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"Owen's psych test was fine." Lacey perched on the edge of Jack's desk, her arms folded and a deep frown on her young features. At only twenty four she looked like she was already in her thirties. Torchwood had that effect on people. Her blonde hair was pulled back haphazardly, her eyes which had once been a bright cobalt blue were dull and framed with dark circles. She barely smiled any more.

"Gwen died less than three months before we sent him back in the past. He spent six months suppressing his humanity and watching over a friend who he knows is already dead in his time, that alone would mess with anyone's mind." Jack objected.

Lacey shrugged, strands of hair falling in to her eyes. "He's good at hiding his feelings Jack...not with coping with them. Keep an eye on him." Sliding off his desk she noticed what he was holding in his hands. A framed photograph from a year earlier, when both Ianto and Gwen were alive and Toshiko was still sane. Lacey had been with them since just after the outbreak. She'd got to know them all and loved and respected each of them for being strong enough to deal with what they had all been through. Especially Owen.

"Like I looked after Ianto? Or Gwen? Tosh?" Jack asked bitterly, his finger tracing over the image remorsefully. Lacey's tired eyes darkened.

"We both know that Tosh was my fault. You remind me of that everyday Jack." She stormed off, leaving the brooding Captain on his own. They all carried their burdens. Tosh was Lacey's and Ianto was his. And Owen, he had more than his fair share of burdens. One of them being Gwen Cooper.

He'd refused to tell her any more about her future. Jack had made it quite clear that the

less non-essential stuff she knew the better. He didn't want time to be altered any more than it needed to be. Eventually she'd given up asking, a yawn stifling her objections. After grabbing a few blankets from the linen cupboard he'd made up the sofa for himself and insisted that Gwen take his bed.

"I couldn't. You need it more than me-"  
"Gwen. I've been in a bloody cell for the best part of six months. Trust me, the sofa is like a five star hotel compared to it." Smiling she finally relented. She surprised him by kissing his cheek before heading to his bedroom. It had been instinct. Whenever she'd been in Owen's flat she'd been there to talk or to have sex. Usually both. It was hard to remember that it wasn't 2007. They weren't carrying on some secret affair behind Rhys' back. She wasn't even alive.

Rhys. She hadn't even thought of him. What had happened between the two of them? Did he know she'd died? Or, like Suzie's family, had she simply 'disappeared'? She needed to know but no one was telling her anything. She had to find out for herself. Yawning again she decided she could leave it till morning. Her immediate concern was to find something to sleep in. She only had the clothes she was wearing.

Spotting an extra wardrobe in the corner of Owen's room she decided to find something of his to wear to bed. Maybe he still had that purple T-shirt she loved sleeping in so much? Pulling the doors open she gasped. The second wardrobe was full of women's clothes. Not just any clothes though. Her clothes. Her favourite jacket, her raggedy jeans she refused to throw out, her favourite pair of converse. They were accompanied by newer clothes. All her size and taste. She opened one of the drawers attached to the wardrobe an found it full of pyjamas. Pulling out the first pair she quickly redressed and stormed out to find Owen already lying on the couch, the TV on low.

"Why the hell are all of my clothes here!" His gaze travelled away from the television to the woman standing before him.

"Jack put them there before I left for when you got here. He took them out of the storage locker." Owen answered simply. Gwen flushed. She hadn't thought that Jack had put them there for her. Then again what had she thought? Owen had stolen her clothes? Or she lived with him? In hindsight both options were ridiculous. She was about to apologise when she noticed Owen staring at her. His eyes were darting around, trying to take all of her form in at once. She smiled. Nothing much had changed. Had she kept up an affair with Owen until her death?

"Were we still-"

"Go to sleep Gwen." He snapped, his eyes darkening and returning to whatever show he was watching. Owen Harper was already a pretty messed up individual, he didn't need to add lusting after a dead woman on to his long list of problems. Gwen returned to the bedroom, slipping under the covers she waited for sleep to over come her. Her tired body and overworked mind complied and she was soon in a deep sleep.

She woke a few hours later to the sound of a low pitched whining. Creeping out of bed she made her way to the living room. She found Owen standing by the glass wall, staring out over the city with tear filled eyes. His mouth was open and the strange, melancholic whining seemed to be coming from him. It was a sad yet beautiful sound as if the pain of his soul had been set to music. She watched silently for a few more minutes before returning to the bedroom. She didn't try to comfort him. It wasn't the Owen she knew out there weeping. It was a darker, broken man who was now a stranger. She knew little of the years that had passed, but she did know one thing for sure; he wasn't her Owen.


	10. Chapter 10

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Gwen's never exactly follow Jack's orders religiously.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Gwen woke early the next morning, quickly dressing and leaving an exhausted Owen still fast asleep on the couch. She took his car keys from the kitchen counter and found he still owned the same sports car. She chuckled as she began driving. Commitment, even to a car, wasn't Owen's usual style.

She knew Jack would be angry that she'd ran off on her own, leaving Owen and venturing in to a world she didn't belong in, but she had to see Rhys. She was dead in this time. How was he coping? Was he looking after himself? Had he moved on?

She parked across the street from the flat they had shared and waited. He'd be leaving for work soon. Twenty minutes later he still hadn't left the flat. For the first time Gwen really took in the street around her. Three years on and it looked no different, she could be sitting in 2007 and nothing would look amiss. Except for Rhys' car. It wasn't there. How had she missed something like that?

Getting out of the car she quickly made her way over to the apartment block. Checking the names next to each buzzer she soon found her flat. Instead of her and Rhys' names written in his scrawl, there was the name of one woman written in neat script. Margery Plough. Pushing the buzzer she waited for a response. The door unlocked and she rushed up to the floor her flat was on. Standing at the door was an elderly woman. "Hello." Gwen forced herself to smile. "Do you live here?"

"Oh yes dear." The woman replied, a broad smile covering her wrinkled face. She pushed her spectacles up her nose, trying to get a better view of the young woman standing by her door. "Margery Plough."

"Nice to meet you. My name's Gwen." She shook the old woman's hand. "Do you mind if I ask how long you've lived here? Just I used to know the man who lived here before you."

"Oh! He was a nice man. Sold me the place two years back now. Him and the wife wanted a bigger place what with the baby due." Wife? Baby? She had a child and no one had thought to mention it? He or she would be two years old by now, walking, talking and running circles round Rhys no doubt. Was her a good dad? Could he look after a child on his own?

"I don't suppose you know where they moved to?" It was a long shot and she knew it but Gwen had to know straight away where Rhys and her child were. The woman thought for a few moments before mumbling something about letters and how unreliable the post was. She left the door for a few moments and returned with a small stack of letters and a note attached to them. It had an address on.  
"They still send letters here for them! That's the address I pass them on to. A nice young postman takes them for me. I suppose you could drop them off." Gwen could barely contain her excitement as she said her goodbyes and raced back to the car. She was going to see her family.

The address was an street in a good area, next to the local school and with people carrier's parked outside the doors. It was a place to raise a family. Gwen parked a little down the street from number twenty seven, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rhys and her child.

Holding her breath she watches as the door to number twenty seven opened. A young blonde woman around Gwen's age emerged carrying a baby boy with bright blonde hair. He was the double of his father, however, he looked nothing like Gwen. She heard the boy call the stranger 'mummy' and her heart sank. It wasn't her son. Rhys wasn't her husband. Checking the numerous letters that she'd left on the passenger seat she found no mention of her. All of the letter were addressed to Rhys or a Mrs S. Williams.

She was shaken from her thoughts and self pity by the passenger door opening. She watched silently as Owen slid in to the front seat, his expression neutral. He was angry at her though. She could tell from the way he was holding his jaw. "You, Gwen Cooper, are extremely predictable." He broke the awkward silence, his gaze focusing on the blonde woman and her son as they got in to the family car. "Her name's Sarah Williams. That's her son Ryan. That's all you need to know."

She clenched her hands tightly around the steering wheel, forcing herself to remain calm. "The man I love is married and has a two year old son even though I've been dead less than a year-"

"Three months." Owen interrupted. "And if it helps you left him." He knew he was telling her too much, but he wasn't Jack. He couldn't cut himself off from the rest of humanity when he wanted to.

"Why?" Gwen choked out. "I know we had our problems but that was my fault not his-"

She paused as she noticed Owen had changed. He was no longer staring out the window but at her. He looked so hurt and vulnerable, so very unlike Owen. The grief shining through in his eyes was enough to make her want to hold him "Owen? What is it? What's wrong?"

"I'm sitting here with a woman who I know isn't actually **my** Gwen, but is exactly like her and I'm helping her stalk her ex-boyfriend's wife, who actually drove off a few minutes ago." He smiled. A sad and forced smile. "You left Rhys for someone else. Me." She stared at him in disbelief, shaking her head. She would never leave a stable, loving relationship like she with Rhys for casual sex. Then it dawned on her, the way Owen acted around her, angry at her for not being the Gwen he'd lost, for wanting Rhys and not him. It was more than just a fling.

"I thought you were with that girl Lacey." They both laughed at her confession. Only she could come out with something like that after Owen's revelation. "Well you were all over each other." Owen shook his head and continued to laugh. It had been so long since he had allowed himself to laugh and enjoy himself that the noise sounded foreign to his ears, like someone else was laughing, not him.

"We're just friends, besides Lacey wouldn't be interested." He explained. "Look, to set the record straight, you left Rhys for me. We lived together until you died, that's why your clothes are at my place, and why I hid those photos and stuff before you could see them. Jack doesn't want you knowing more than you need to, but I can't handle you being her and not being **her. **I didn't want you thinking I was being a prat by acting weird around you-"

"Wouldn't be the first time." She teased, earning a genuine smile from him.

"How about we get back to the hub? Start running some blood work on you to see whether or not I wasted six months of my life." He smirked as his façade slipped back in to place. He was no longer showing his vulnerability or his grief over losing the woman he loved, and Gwen doubted she would see that side of him again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Owen begins testing Gwen, and she gets her first glimpse of how the new Torchwood team work.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Apologies for the lack of updates, but exams are coming up so my free time is disappearing. _Italics_ indicate a memory.

"Where've you two kids been?" Jack quizzed. It was already past noon. Owen skulked off to find Lacey, leaving Gwen alone with Jack.

"We got up late." She brushed off his questions. "So when do we get started?"

"No time like the present." Owen interrupted them, having returned from speaking to the other woman.

She expected to be stuck on the autopsy table all day but Owen didn't lead her to the autopsy area. She followed him down one of the many dimly lit tunnels of Torchwood and in to a room she didn't know existed.

It looked like a cross between a laboratory and an office. It held what looked like a customized dentist's chair, a desk full of clutter, a filling cabinet, equally cluttered, various work benches full of vials and assorted medical equipment, a lap top, a fridge and a couch. "Cosy." Gwen muttered, more to herself than to her companion.

"We spent the better part of three years in here…looking for a cure. Anyway, let's get to work. Roll up your sleeve." Gwen took a seat in the medical chair and removed her jacket, she lay back waiting for Owen. He removed a fresh needle from its wrapper and brought it to her arm.

"No jokes about a small prick then?" She teased as the needle pierced her flesh. He cracked a weak smile at the memory. Once he had a pint of her blood he handed her a glass of orange juice and a biscuit.

"Lie down for a bit." He went to the refrigeration unit, worryingly the same place he'd fetched the orange juice from, and retrieved one of the samples he still had from the older Gwen.

Putting a sample of each in to a machine he set the controls and left it to analyse the two blood samples. "It'll be…"He trailed off as he took in the scene before him. Gwen lay fully reclined in the chair, eyes closed and lips slightly parted.

Her eyes snapped open as she suddenly felt a weight on top of her. She found herself pinned down by Owen, his eyes wild and yet his expression blank, as though he were staring right through her.

She was napping after an all-nighter in the lab, half asleep in the chair. Owen grinned as he padded softly over like a lion silently stalking its prey. He pounced, taking her by surprise. Her eyes opened and glared at him half-heartedly.

"Oi you. I need my beauty sleep." His triumphant grin turned in to something much more sincere as he gazed down at her.

"No. No. You don't."

"Owen!" Lacey repeated for the third time, snapping him out of his daze. He stiffened as he realised what had gone on. He'd acted on instinct, the beast within him taking control. "Jack wants you in the boardroom." She ordered, her voice stern as though she were the eldest of the two. He growled at her, his grip on Gwen's wrists increasing to an uncomfortable amount.

"Do you want to try and take me Harper?" She asked, only a hint of teasing in her voice. Grunting, he slid off Gwen's lap and stormed out of the lab.

"He just jumped on me!" Gwen explained as Lacey walked her back up to the boardroom. The younger girl smiled sympathetically.

"He was going off the edge before we sent him back. I think sending him back to a time before any of this happened, when you and Ianto were still…well it sent him over it." Her tone changed to a lighter note as she added. "If he starts anything funny just give him a good kicking. Works for me." Gwen laughed. She had a feeling she and the blonde had gotten on while her future self was alive.

They arrived at the boardroom where the others were already waiting. "We've got a situation." Jack explained. "Lennie Pilkington's been arrested. He was our man on the inside. A doctor working on a so called 'cure' for the government." He added for Gwen's benefit. "He's being held for eight hours at the police station until he can be taken to the government base. If he gets there, we're screwed."

"So what do we do?"

Jack's trademark grin returned. "I'm glad you asked Gwen. Still got that police uniform of yours?"

Gwen ran in front of the police station chased by Owen in weevil form. He dived on her, wrestling her to the floor. The desk sergeant and a few others immediately ran out to help her, leaving the coast clear for Jack and Lacey to slip in to the station unnoticed.

They made their way to the holding cells in search of Pilkington. He wasn't in any of them. Jack sighed. What he wouldn't give for a straightforward operation just once. "Check the interview rooms." He ordered Lacey as they made their way deeper in to the station. She, like Gwen, was in a police constable's uniform with her hat low down over her face, so no one even gave them a second glance as they made their way through the building.

She popped her head in to investigation room four and found Pilkington, but he wasn't alone. "Ma'am." She shouted urgently. "There's a weevil attacking a group of officers outside! They said to get you." The woman scrambled out of the room, ordering her to guard the prisoner. A few moments later Jack entered the room, his pistol in his hand. "Get after her. Keep her away from Gwen." He glared at his young companion when she didn't move.

"You'll shoot him. He doesn't deserve that."

He sighed and nodded. "Take care of him, I'll go get Gwen and the others. See you back at the hub." Pilkington smiled warily at her.

"Thank you so much. That animal would have killed me." A look of pure hatred contorted Lacey's youthful features. The old doctor's eyes widened as a sadistic smirk spread over the young girl's lips.

The fight between Owen and the police had only been going on for a few minutes when the officer from the interrogation room arrived at the scene. He'd knocked out eight police constables and was about to tell Gwen to get back in the car when he spotted her. Agent Emmerich. Head of the B.A.D.S; The British Alien Defence Squad. They were the government's replacement Torchwood set up to 'deal' with the weevil problem. Owen quickly grabbed Gwen and pulled her behind him, out of sight. Realisation quickly dawned on Emmerich.

"Doctor Harper I presume?" His threatening growl answered her question. "I believe I've just seen Miss Cassidy…so who's this? A new recruit?" Owen smirked, a satisfied toothy grin as Jack appeared behind her, his pistol aimed at her back.

"Owen get in the SUV!" He did as he was told, dragging Gwen along behind him.

"What about Lacey?" Gwen spoke before Owen could stop her. Emmerich's eyes widened.

"Gwen?"

Jack struck her on the back of the head, knocking the agent to the ground. "Owen, car!" The two men bungled Gwen in to the SUV and made a hasty retreat, leaving the youngest member to fend for herself. Something both Owen and Jack knew she was perfectly capable of.

'Who was that?" Gwen quizzed once they were safely away and Owen was back in his human form.

"The enemy."


	12. Chapter 12

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Gwen feels more out of place than ever.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Gwen looked up at the lift that was descending in to the hub where Owen was waiting for it. She watched curiously as a figure rolled in to Owen's arms. It was Lacey. He carried her to the sofa and lay her down gently. Gwen gasped as she took in the younger girl's appearance.

Her face and hands were covered in blood; her eyes were wild and feral like. She lay half unconscious as Owen used his shirt to wipe away the blood from her face. He grinned as he stroked her hair, a loving look on his face. "You took care of Pilkington then?" She laughed, wiping the blood away from her lips.

"There isn't a bit big enough to identify him."

"Good work." Jack appeared behind Gwen, a smile on his face. She shook her head in disbelief. Toshiko wasn't the only one that had lost her sanity.

"You're laughing about killing a man!" She shouted in disgust. "Someone who helped you-"

"He deserved it." Lacey growled, malice in her voice that had no place in a young woman's voice. "The bastard told the B.A.D.S where to find Tosh. They held her prisoner for three days…by the time I saved her she was already gone. They took her from me…so I made him pay, just like I'll make the rest of them pay." She brushed Owen aside and got to her feet. Pulling off her bloodstained T-shirt she left them to go shower before she checked on Toshiko.

Gwen opened her mouth to say something but was stopped by Owen. "Don't you dare judge us. You have no idea what these last three years have been like."

"Hi." Lacey smiled as Toshiko sat up when she walked in to the makeshift apartment that they'd bee sharing for the last few months. "Long day?" She collapsed on the sofa beside her, tucking her lugs up and cuddling in to the older woman.

"Mhm. Took care of a few things. How about you?"

"I talked to Ianto." Toshiko beamed. The younger woman sighed. Sometimes it was like she was fine, like she was the same old Tosh, others she barely recognised her blonde best friend.

"I'm beat. I'm gonna have an early night." She kissed her forehead and made her way to her room to crawl in to bed; A few minutes later the older woman was curled up beside her.

"Is she a weevil?" Owen looked up from the movie they were watching to face Gwen.

"Lacey? No, she's not a weevil." Gwen's questioning look spurred him on. "She's not human, but she's not a weevil…I don't know what she is. Speaking of weevils, the blood analysis should be back tomorrow. We'll see if you're worth your keep."

"You know I am." She flirted. Once again Owen frowned and shut down. "What the hell's going on Owen? You're treating me like a leper." Putting down his drink he sighed.

"Every time I'm around you, hear your voice, see you smile…it kills me. You're not my Gwen. You're not the Gwen Cooper who left me for Rhys, not the girl I gave my spare flat key too…and what hurts the most is when I forget just for a _second_, that you're not her." His expression was pained as though each word were forced.

"I'm sorry." Was all Gwen could think to say, but it didn't make a difference. The damage was done and a thick heavy tension fell over them. Gwen excused herself and went to bed. Curled up under the sheets she stared blankly out at the view of the bay through Owen's bedroom window. It was the same city below but the people were so different. She didn't belong there any more than the weevils did.

"The bodies of two non-humans were discovered in the early hours of this morning. Although the police and the Alien Defence Squad have insisted they were simply weevils eye witnesses reported that they had appeared to be human." Gwen muted the television and put down her bowl of cornflakes. She could hear the eerie wailing again, but not just from Owen. The entire city seemed to be engrossed by the sound.

"They're all grieving." Owen's voice seemed unnaturally quiet. "We're all connected; generally the psychic connection is weak, does little more than tell us when one of us dies." He walked over to the window, staring at the city below. "The two who died, Peter and Helen Sacryn, they were twins. Higher levels too." Gwen wasn't sure what he was talking about.

"The ones who do keep their humanity, they're higher levels, as far as the public are concerned we don't exist. But we do. They're people who were turned, they're DNA was so close to mine that they're like me, a higher level. Peter and Helen were more than my friends…every last weevil comes from me, my DNA.

"They're like family?" Owen nodded solemnly. He'd felt the pain of losing every weevil that had been killed, even across the rift in the past. Few higher levels had ever been killed. It was like losing dozens of lower levels at the same time. He'd woken in the night, his head pounding and his tight chest. Despair gripped his mind as he felt the life draining from his friends. It was times like that he was glad Gwen had never been turned. Her death had enough to deal with.

A loud, insistent knocking at the front door ended the silence that had settle over them. Rushing to the door he opened it to find Lacey in front of him, ready in plain black clothes and a gun tucked under her T-shirt, she threw him a rucksack full of identical plain black clothes, including a ski mask. "Jack wants us to take care of the situation." She stated, no trace of emotion on her youthful face. He nodded and with a quick glance at Gwen he followed Lacey out the door, slamming it behind him. Their mission was simple. Break in to the heavily guarded morgue and contaminate the bodies of the dead weevils so that the government couldn't use their blood against those weevils that were still alive.

"Morning." Jack smiled as Owen took a seat on the couch in the hub. She mumbled a reply with her eyes staring at the coffee machine. She sure could use one of Ianto's special brews.

"How did Ianto die?" Jack fell silent, a pained expression on his face.

"Saving the rest of us." He finally answered. "We were in a government facility, their version of Torchwood. They'd been experimenting on weevils…turned them more violent, more dangerous. The only way out was to blow up the complex. Ianto volunteered."

"Why didn't you do it?" Gwen quizzed. "You can't die." Sighing Jack shrugged.

"I'd have been trapped in there, a mile underground. The explosion would have sealed the only way out. Ianto stepped forward. He saved us all. He's a hero." Gwen smiled. The quiet Torchwood handyman had never taken much of an active role in the field, but in the end he'd more than made up for it. "He was a good man." Jack nodded, silently agreeing.

They looked up as the door began to open. Owen and Lacey walked through the door laughing. "The look on that bloke's face!" Owen roared. "And when you just yawned and asked if they had room service." Jack's mood instantly changed once he saw them. "Hey there trouble, how'd it go?" Lacey grinned as she flopped on to the couch beside Gwen. "Bodies were taken care of. We had to hide in one of the body lockers…the coroner found me." She and Owen burst in to a fresh fit of laughter. Jack grinned, ruffling her hair with his hand. "Good work."

"All in a day's work for team Harper." He teased, earning a playful shove from the younger girl.

"Team Lacey accompanied by fang boy." Watching them together, seeing Owen genuinely happy, she understood exactly how Suzie had felt. Replaced. This new girl was suddenly laughing and joking with her friends, fitting in more than her. She was younger and she was the one Jack called in an emergency. Not for the first time since arriving Gwen was reminded that she didn't belong to there. Owen excused himself to get changed out of his combat gear, leaving the two girls alone. "There's nothing going on between us."

Lacey broke the uneasy silence between them. She laughed at Gwen's shocked expression. "When I first came here, you were so nice and friendly…but you hated my guts. You were convinced I wanted to steal Owen from you." The Welshwoman blushed, embarrassed at being caught out.

"I'm still with Rhys in my time, me and Owen it's…"

"Complicated?" The younger woman offered. "If it's any consolation in my time you loved each other a lot." She squeezed her shoulder before getting up to leave. "Oh and by the way I'm really not interested in Owen."

"Got your eye on Jack?" Gwen teased the younger woman. Lacey grinned, she'd forgotten how much Gwen actually knew about her and shook her head.

"Actually I have a soft spot for Tosh." She left Gwen with her mouth hanging open.

When Lacey entered her apartment she found Toshiko sitting on the couch with her laptop. "How's my little dork?" Tosh rolled her eyes.

"Must you call me that?" Lacey grinned.

"You know you love it." As she watched Toshiko tap away the keys she smiled. The days when she was lucid and seemed almost normal again were growing rare. It was nice to see her alert.

"Lacey?"

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't you tell me Gwen was alive?" Looking at the screen of Toshiko's laptop she found security footage of Gwen from yesterday.

"Um…about that…"


	13. Chapter 13

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Things don't always go to plan.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"How could you let her find out?" Jack ran a hand through his ruffled hair as he paced around his office. Lacey scowled.

"I didn't let her. I thought I'd restricted her computer access, but she's still a brainiac."

Toshiko sat outside with Gwen, waiting for Jack and Lacey to stop arguing. They'd explained everything to Toshiko, but neither expected her to remember within a few hours. "It's good to see you." Gwen smiled. Toshiko returned her smile.

"You too. It's been weeks since we've talked…I mean." She faltered as she remembered Gwen had been dead for months. "I'm sorry. I get confused sometimes."

"Everybody does." She hugged her colleague; they had never really been close enough to be friends. She hoped that was something that had changed in the three years.

Owen looked confused as he found Gwen hugging Tosh. "Oi you, you've got your own girl!" He grinned as Lacey swatted his arm. Gwen hid her smile at the possessiveness in his voice, even if it was masked by humour.

Leaving them to their little reunion he headed down to the lab to check the blood analysis. After printing out the results he compared the older Gwen's blood to her younger counterpart's. "Oh god." He ran back to the others and grabbed Gwen to get her attention.

"Have you had a blood transfusion lately?"

"No."

"Fuck!" He cursed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "Your blood's not the same as it was before you were infected-"

"Infected?" Owen looked to Jack, as though asking his permission to carry on. Jack nodded. There was no point in keeping her in the dark.

"How about a beer?" He offered her, wanting to get away from the others and the hub.

The bar was relatively busy so they easily managed to grab a table in a dark and quiet corner. Taking a large mouthful from his pint he began. "I accidentally infected you."

"How?" He looked around awkwardly.

"I lost control and I bit you." He answered truthfully. "You had a fever for three days, your body was fighting the reaction…and it won. You're the only person to ever have been directly exposed and not turn." He took another large gulp of beer. "We tried for years to find a cure using your blood. We found one but it only cured Helen and Peter for three weeks…then you died."

He'd carried on experimenting with the blood he had left but in the end Jack had agreed the only way to find a cure was to go back and get Gwen when it would cause the least damage to history. "So…do I have to go back now?" Gwen's question surprised him. She'd been dying to go back since she'd arrived.

"I guess so…we should probably go back, get you home as soon as."

The ride back to the hub was quiet and tense as neither of them spoke until they reached the fake tourist information centre that acted as a cover for their entrance in to the institute. Owen stopped before they reached the front door and silently looked out across the bay. Gwen stood waiting for him to move or to say something. Finally he inhaled deeply and said, "I'll miss you." She stood awkwardly beside him, unsure of how to respond. "When you go back…I'll never see you again. You'll be dead."

"I could stay, help you and the others to-"

"No." He scorned. "You have to go back. And you have to realise how much you can't live without me and fall madly in love with you." He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. Wrapping his arms around her held her tight, knowing it would be his last chance. He kissed her, his lips barely pressing against hers. It was nothing like the wild, passionate kisses they'd exchanged in life or death situations or while they were making their way to his bedroom, but somehow the small action was far more intimate and intense.

"I promise I'll fix this…stop this from ever happening." He shook his head, silencing her.

"Without a cure there's nothing we can do. I'll get infected and so will everyone else." He almost managed a smile at the look of resolute determination in her eyes. That was the Gwen he'd always know. Too stubborn to give up even when there was nothing she could do.

"Then infect me." She ordered, desperate to try and stop her grim future from ever happening. "Infect me like you did before and my blood will be right. We can find a cure."

"It won't work." Owen objected. He didn't want to risk exposing her again in case fate wasn't so kind and she actually turned.

"Why not?" Jack's voice carried from the doorway to the tourist shop, surprising them both. Owen looked at him with a deep scowl set on his face. He wasn't using Gwen as a guinea pig. "Seems to me it's our only option."

Owen eventually won the argument by point blank refusing to infect her. Without him they couldn't restage the infection and they'd risk turning her with any other weevil. "So we're sending her back." Owen hadn't meant it was a question but Jack replied.

"We can't."

"We've had this discussion Jack." The Captain held up his hands in mock surrender.

"I know. But we _physically_ can't send her back." He pulled out the device that Owen had used to bring them both back from the past. "It's broken, the power cell won't work."

Owen glared at him. "You said it had enough power to get us back!"

"I said it _probably_ did." Jack corrected the younger man.

"Well Tosh fixed the damn things in the first place-"

"Tosh is currently talking to thin air and calling it Mary." Lacey pointed out as she took a seat. She didn't look happy. "If she can even fix it again you'll need to wait till she has a good day." From the tone of her voice and the look on the two men's faces Gwen doubted they came often.

"Wait you said things? There's more than one?" Gwen quizzed.

"It's gone." Lacey answered, as the others remained silent. "It was in the government facility that was destroyed."

"So we have no cure and we can't send her back. Great plan Jack." Owen stormed off from the boardroom. Lacey gave her a sympathetic glance and ran after him. Jack ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

"We'll sort out a cover story, say you weren't really dead. We'll get you an apartment and-"

"Can you get me back three years of my life?" She was close to tears and shaking with fear and anger. She was stuck there. In a world she didn't understand. A world in which she was dead and those around her didn't want her there. Jack got to his feet and wrapped his arms around her. "We'll get through this Gwen. I promise."

Lacey found Owen in his lab, clutching a bottle of vodka he'd stashed in there. "She's stuck here now." She chose her words carefully. "You two could start over-"

"She's not our Gwen. She doesn't belong here; she doesn't even know you anymore. We've got no chance of cure either. We're screwed."

"We've got one chance left." The young blonde objected. He looked up at her and shook his head.

"It wouldn't work." Owen dismissed the idea. Lacey sighed. They had to do something. He saw her expression and pulled her in for a hug. "We'll get through this. All of us." He hoped he sounded convincing because he sure as hell hadn't convinced himself.


	14. Chapter 14

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** When there is no hope for a cure, what options are they left with?

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Apologies for the lack of updates, between my 18th birthday and my A level exams starting I haven't had time to write.

"I want you to infect me so we can find the cure." Owen blinked away the sleep from his eyes. It was almost three in the morning and Gwen had woken him up by sitting on the floor beside the sofa and tapping him.

"I can't." He apologised. "We'd have to recreate the situation, even then it might not work. You won't be a higher level, you'd just be gone…"

"It's a risk I have to take." She sat running her fingers through his hair. He scooted over to let her lie down beside him, cuddled up under his blankets.

"We didn't tell the others how it happened. I bit you when we were…well I got a bit carried away." Hesitantly Gwen silenced him with a kiss.

"You need to infect me again." She kissed him again, this time without hesitation. Both she and Owen could feel the effect she was having on his body.

Lacey's words came flooding back to him. Gwen was stuck in his time. She may not have been the Gwen who left Rhys, nor the woman who accepted the keys to his flat, but she was still Gwen Cooper; and she was alive. He had a second chance to be happy with her.

Shifting his position he sat straddling her, his hands roaming over her body, reacquainting himself with every curve. "Is this what you want?" He needed to be sure before he did anything.

"I want you…and I want to help you." Nodding he pulled her to her feet and led her back in to his bedroom.

Owen knew when he had to infect her and Gwen had a pretty good idea of when it would have been that he'd lost control. Later in the night she tensed as she felt him climaxing and his mouth opened, baring his naturally fang-like teeth. She shuddered as his jaw went crashing down towards her neck, his eyes aflame with and odd mixture of passion and fear. Her eyes snapped closed, anticipating the pain.

Nothing.

She still felt his weight on top of her, his heart beating rapidly so close to hers, but she felt no pain. No trickle of blood from her mouth or feeling of losing her humanity. "There's another way." He let out the breath he'd been holding for so long.

To say Gwen was curious was an understatement. Owen's sudden revelation that he could get her blood without infecting her had left her imagination running wild. Did they still have her body back at Torchwood? Could she learn how she had died? Owen knew her all too well though and spent an hour trailing around Cardiff to get her off his tail before he headed where he needed to go.

Sarah Williams opened the door to find Owen on her doorstep. "What's wrong?" Owen never visited just to be sociable; there was always a reason for him turning up on her doorstep.

"It's a long story. Can I come in?" Rhys appeared beside his wife, holding his young son, a concerned expression dominating his face.

Sitting in a rented car across the street Gwen had no idea what Rhys and his family had to do with her blood. Unless. Was the young boy really his wife's child? Or Gwen's?


	15. Chapter 15

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Gwen meets the last hope for the cure.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Rhys opened his door to reveal his dead ex-girlfriend standing in front of him. "I suppose you better come in." He shrugged in a very Rhys-like way. His lack of shock told her two things. Owen had told him they'd brought her from the past and he knew about Torchwood.

Owen appeared in the hallway before she could enter the living room. "You shouldn't be here." His tone was not of a lover's.

"Why are you?" Gwen demanded to know. "You're supposed to be getting a sample of my blood, not visiting my ex." He looked from her to Rhys and back again. "The only other way to get my DNA is if I had a kid…a son?"

Owen shook his head. Gwen sighed; she had no idea what was going on anymore. "A daughter." He choked out. He led Gwen in to the living room where Sarah sat with her two year old son playing with toy cars. Beside her was a nine-month-old baby girl in her cot. Gwen held her breath as she looked down at the girl. She was the double of Gwen but she had her father's nose and smile, including his naturally pointed teeth.

"She's beautiful." She smiled, already feeling a natural bond with the young child. "What's her name?"

"Anne." Owen answered, standing beside her, looking down at his gurgling daughter.

"She's ours." Gwen held her tiny hand and stroked her thick dark hair.

"I need to get some of her blood and then we're leaving." His emotionless tone had returned. He was preparing himself for leaving his daughter. Again.

"So let me get this straight. I died and you just gave our daughter away!" She hissed, not wanting to shout in front of the quiet child.

"No." Rhys stood up for the man who had stolen his girlfriend. "It was your choice Gwen. Owen tried to take her back twice."

"Why would I give up my baby?" Gwen was shocked by the revelation.

"It was safer. We couldn't keep her, not with the risks of working for Torchwood." Owen explained her reasoning. "Rhys and Sarah can give her a better life than we ever could. You knew that. You still do." Gwen nodded as she stared down at the happy, innocent face of her baby girl.

"Doesn't make it any easier though."

Lacey sat beside Gwen as she started absently at nothing. "Your daughter's going to be ok." She comforted the disturbed woman. "Rhys and Sarah are good people…and their son Danny, he'll be a great older brother." Gwen nodded.

"Rhys is a good man. I always thought he'd make a great dad."

"What about Owen?"

"Owen…the Owen I know, he's a tosser. I wouldn't trust him with a teenager never mind a toddler…but this Owen, your Owen, he's different. If he wasn't so bitter I'd say he'd be a great dad."

"He's got a lot to be bitter about." Lacey pointed out, her voice laced with just as much bitterness. "In the last year alone he's lost his daughter, Ianto, and you. We are all bitter Gwen. We just deal with it in different ways."

"How do you cope?" Gwen was close to cracking up and she'd been there less than a week. Lacey had been living with the world in the state it was for two years. As she looked at the young blonde, considering the question that she'd been asked, she realised just how young she really looked. Barely in her twenties and the dark circles under her eyes looked as heavy as the burden in them.

"I can't afford not to." She answered simply. Honestly. "If I stop coping…Tosh needs me."

"You're just a child." Gwen's dark gaze turned to one of pity and she tried to wrap her arms around the younger woman.

The blonde pulled away and shook her head, as if burnt by the touch or the word. "I had a happy childhood. But I haven't been in a child in a long time. So do not treat me as one."


	16. Chapter 16

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Owen faces Jack after he learns Gwen knows about her child.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Short chapter I managed to get done while taking a break from History Revision. I've got another chapter or two almost so should be up soon.

"She's not coping with this." Lacey pointed out as Owen sat staring blankly at Jack's desk. Jack looked up from the apple in his hand and nodded.

"She's stuck here. She's lost three years of her life…oh and she's just found out she has a daughter she can't have…you know I'd say she's coping pretty well." He cast a sour glance at the sulking Owen.

"I didn't mean for her to find out about-"

"Oh really!" Jack slammed his hand down on his desk, his apple rolling off on to the floor. "Maybe you did want her to find out! Maybe you thought you could play happy families!"

Owen tensed as he felt Lacey's hand clutching his own. "No! Look I want my daughter back but… Anne's better off without me." Lacey sighed.

"I've got to check on Tosh." Owen followed her out and grabbed hold of her arm before she could rush off.

"What are we going to do about Gwen?" He sighed. Lacey shrugged and pulled the older man in for a tight hug.

"We'll sort something out. I just don't think she needs another bombshell today." Lacey pulled away and looked towards the corridor that led down to her and Toshiko's apartment.

"She needs me."

He nodded, letting her go, but watching her as she went. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Why did life have to be so complicated? Forcing himself to hold together he trudged off to the lab to check the blood sample he'd taken from his daughter.

He found Gwen sitting in his lab waiting for him. "A cure won't change how crappy this place is you know." He sighed as he lay on the medical bed beside her, locking his hands in hers. "The only way we could have stopped this was to send you back."

"Well you'd better make do with what you've got Harper, you're stuck with me." She smiled, pulling him in for a quick peck on the lips. He smiled as he pulled her in close against him, as though to test she was really there.

"Think I can live with that."

He really couldn't. He needed more than just Gwen back. He needed his daughter in his arms; he wanted Ianto back at the coffee machine fighting off Jack's advances and he craved to have the old sane Toshiko back. Above all he needed a way to send Gwen back to her rightful time with a cure to stop him mutating in to the first Weevil. He needed to repair the damage he'd caused.


	17. Chapter 17

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** As Lacey begins to lose Tosh the B.A.D.S make a startling discovery.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Earlier I listed Lacey's age as 24, but now I feel it's too old for her character, so I made her a couple years younger.

"Toshiko?" Lacey stood over the older woman, sitting on their couch. "Tosh!" She shook her, rousing her from her trance like state. The Asian woman looked up at her, he eyes wide with confusion.

"Who…who are you?"

"Owen…the door…someone-" Gwen tried to tell Owen there was someone at the door in between kisses. As the knocking grew incessantly louder he finally pulled away from her and tugged his T-shirt back on.

When he opened the front door he found Lacey standing in front of him. Drenched from the rain, her jeans and hoodie sticking to her. "Come on in." He shut the door behind her and followed her in to the living room.

"Lacey?" Gwen quickly buttoned her shirt up and moved aside to make room for the younger woman on the couch beside her. "What's wrong?"

"Tosh is having a bad night." The blonde explained. "She forgot who I was and went hysterical. She started screaming for Jack…wouldn't let me near her." Owen looked away from her as he spoke.

"This is the third time this month. She's getting worse."

"No!" The blonde's loud protests startled Gwen. The passion and fear in her voice surprised her. At the tender age of twenty-one she truly understood unconditional love. She'd given up her life to look after the woman she loved, refusing to give up on her; even when she didn't even remember who Lacey was.

"She is not going to an asylum!"

"She needs full time care Lacey. Professional care." He looked to Gwen for assistance, but she was in no position to make a judgement on Toshiko's welfare.

"She needs to be taken care of by people who love her! I don't expect you to understand either the concept of love or standing by your loved ones." Lacey growled.

"Now hold on a minute-" Gwen tried to interject but was silenced by the younger girl.

"You don't know anything about what he did! And you sure as hell don't know anything about me!" Glaring at them both she stormed out of the apartment.

Owen ran after her, once again leaving Gwen on her own. "Lacey!" He grabbed hold of her arm, stopping her in her tracks. "No one's abandoning anybody. But we have to be prepared. Tosh isn't going to get any better."

"Owen, the only thing keeping me here is Toshiko and the chance to save my future!"

"We will." He pulled her in close, holding her tightly. "We're going to find a cure and sort this mess out. It's a little hard without a time machine and the right blood…but we still have each other. I will never leave you again. Understand?" She nodded still crying in to his chest.

"I don't want to lose Tosh." She sobbed. "It's not fair. I love her Owen."

"Shh." He soothed, running a hand through her blonde locks.

"She's asleep." Owen looked up from the magazine he was reading as Gwen walked in to the bedroom. "We got halfway through the film and she fell asleep." Tossing his magazine aside she cuddled in to him. "Now where were we?" He let her kiss him but pulled away before she could take it any further. "I can't he admitted. "I just can't stop. Not with Lacey in the other room."

Gwen pulled away and sighed. "I've seen the way you are with her."

"There's nothing going on Gwen." He tried to reassure her.

"You're like a big brother to her." She smiled and kissed him again. "Night."

"Agent Emmerich." An agent addressed her as she entered her office. "I have something you may want to see. Pilkington's autopsy. We found DNA in one of the bitemarks. The Torchwood member who killed him, Lacey Cassidy, is not human. She has DNA markers of a weevil, but her genetics are completely different to all other known samples. It's like her human half neutralised the weevil infection."

Emmerich grinned as she looked over the report. "Looks like we may have found a cure after all."

Before Lacey or Gwen were awake the next morning Owen slipped out of the apartment to get to the lab and test the blood he'd taken from his daughter. Lacey stirred, suddenly awake and all traces of sleep gone. "Owen!" She shouted, but got no response. Tensing she swiftly made her way in to Owen's bedroom.

Gwen's eyes shot open as she felt a hand covering her mouth. Lacey stood over her, signalling for her to remain silent as she pulled her hand away. "Get dressed." She ordered. Just after pulling her jeans on there was a knock on the front door. "Stay!" She hissed. "Who is it? Doctor Harper isn't here at the moment."

"Perfect." Gwen heard the front door slam open. Lacey had ordered her to stay hidden out of sight in the bedroom, but once she heard the sounds of fighting she rushed to Lacey's defence.

She stopped in her tracks at the sight she found. The young blonde stood in the middle of the room, her T-shirt covered in blood, her eyes wild and her teeth bared and elongated. Three men lay around her, beaten and bloody.

"Lacey, sweetie are you ok?" Her gaze locked on to Gwen, staring in to her and yet right through her. "Sweetheart, it's me. It's Gwen." The younger girl shook her head clear.

"We have to get to Torchwood." She picked up one of Owen's shirts that had been left on the living room floor and pulled it over her blood stained T-shirt.


	18. Chapter 18

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary: **Back in 2007 Jack begins to understand what's going on.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"How are you holding up?" Jack sat beside Owen watching the water trickle down in to the basin.

"She's gone." He sulked. "I locked her in a cage with a weevil, Jack. It had something in its pocket. I put it there. It was small and a shiny metallic green…" He trailed off as he realised Jack wasn't listening.

"I've got something to do." He left Owen by the basin and headed off in to the bowls of Torchwood. "Ianto!" He dragged the bemused man from the archive tunnel he was in and down in to a smaller storage room, a grin on his face. "Small, green, metallic sphere-"

"Box thirty-two C, fifth shelf, third on the left."

Jack's grin became impossibly wide. Pulling Ianto in close he smacked the lips on him. The younger man pulled away, straightening his tie.

"Anything else sir?"

"Maybe later." He winked, his mood restored. "You can't tell the others…but Gwen's safe." Ianto looked confused by his statement.

The older man pulled the right box from the shelf and took out a small metallic sphere. "This is a crude version of my vortex manipulator. Owen gave it to the weevil. It knew how to use it. Which means I must have shown it how."

"You're suggesting a weevil was intelligent enough to work a device that travels through time? And you must have sent it to kidnap Gwen?"

Jack nodded. "Exactly. Weevils aren't all dumb, slobbering primitives you know. C'mon I'll show you." He once again dragged the younger man out of the room and towards the SUV. They drove in relative silence until they reached a small bar tucked away in one of the back streets of Cardiff.

"Hey Davis." Jack took a seat on one of the stools at the bar, his greatcoat hanging down behind him. Ianto took a seat beside him, carefully surveying the quiet bar. It was dimly lit and empty, being only ten in the morning. Davis, the bartender and owner, was a greying man in his late forties. He set a bottle of American beer down in front of Jack and another in front of Ianto.

"What can I do for you Jack?"

"I want you to show my friend here what you can do." Davis looked apprehensively around the bar before sighing.

Ianto watched as the man's teeth and fingers grew in to fangs and claws. The youngest man fell from his stool as he watched the man turn in to a weevil right in front of him.

"H-how?"

"Two percent of weevils retain their humanity."

"Retain?" Ianto quizzed as he got back to his feet.

"Davis fell through the rift, all the weevils have. In two thousand and eight a virus spreads throughout humanity, it causes seventy percent of the British population to become infected. Only two percent turn out like Davis."

"Jack explained it all to me in two thousand ten." Davis explained. "Been living here since ninety-eight."

Ianto's eyes widened as he realised what the bartender was saying. "You've known about this for almost a decade and you never even mentioned it?" Jack shrugged, taking a swig from his beer bottle.

"I told you. The twenty-first century is when it all changes."

"Owen." Owen looked up from his laptop to find Toshiko standing in his lab. "I can't find Lacey." She still looked quite dazed but at least she remembered Lacey.

"She's with Gwen. They'll be in soon."

"Oh, ok. Where's Ianto?" Owen sighed, running a hand through his overgrown hair.

"Ianto's gone Tosh. You know that."

"Gone where?" She didn't grasp the euphemism and Owen didn't feel like explaining Ianto's death for the third time since it had happened.

"He's out Tosh." Why don't you go have a nap? Lacey's gonna be here real soon. Toshiko left, mumbling to herself. Jack scowled at the frustrated doctor.

"You're not the only one who lost someone Jack!"

"No but you're the only one who's getting a second chance! Ianto's dead and Tosh is a few cents short of a dollar. You've got Gwen back and you have a beautiful, healthy baby girl-"

"I don't deserve them."

"It wasn't your fault Owen."


	19. Chapter 19

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary: **Owen finds out the cure was under his nose all along

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"Owen!" Lacey shouted as she stormed in to the hub, followed closely by Gwen. "Owen get your ass out here now!" Jack frowned as he walked out of his office.

"Language kid." Lacey glared angrily at him, taking Jack by surprise.

"I'm twenty-one years old. I'm a not a kid Jack." He was about to respond when Owen rushed in to the room, tearing his shirt off the blonde.

"Oh my god. Where are you hurt?" She pushed him away with enough force to make him lose his footing and fall to the floor.

"It's not my blood." He let out the breath he'd been holding since first seeing the blood stained shirt and shook his head.

"You shout for a doctor while you're covered in blood! What the hell was I supposed to think Lacey? I was bloody terrified."

"Maybe for once you could realise I'm capable of looking after myself. I'm stronger than any weevil."

"Weevil or human, we all bleed. We all die." Lacey rolled her eyes at Jack's philosophical interruption and picked up the torn shirt.

"Three guys came to the apartment for Gwen. One might be dead." Ignoring the look of disbelief on Gwen's face she took off to find Toshiko.

"She's had a rough week." Jack reminded him as Owen scowled at her retreating form.

"Yeah well, she's not the only one."

Owen returned to his apartment to find the three agents gone and his place cleaner than it had been in months. Emmerich stood outside waiting for him. "I'm here to make a deal with you." She informed him as he stood glaring at her.

" No thanks. Already got double glazing."

"There is a cure." He fell silent as her words sunk in. "My scientists believe that given a large enough DNA sample they could have an immunization in a few weeks and a cure in a month."

Owen shook his head. "Gwen's not the cure. Her blood's different because this Gwen was never bitten." He tried to slam the door shut but her foot stopped it from closing.

"We don't want Gwen. It's the youngest member of your team we're interested in." She gasped as he roughly shoved her against the wall outside his apartment, his teeth threateningly exposed. "Leave Lacey the hell alone!" He growled, the weevil inside him threatening to break out. Emmerich struggled beneath him, pinned by his weight.

"Temper temper Doctor Harper. Don't you want to be cured? Don't you want to be happy? Live your life with Gwen… and your daughter? Think of what's best for her."

"I am!" He snarled. "There is no way I'd hand Lacey over to you lot. I'd rather spend the rest of my life as a weevil." He slammed her against the wall before releasing her; just to make sure she got the message.

She left clutching her bruised shoulder and leaving Owen to his own thoughts. He'd tested Lacey's blood a long time ago, when she'd first joined Torchwood, but nothing irregular had turned up. She was no ordinary human, but she wasn't a weevil either. She was something else entirely. He wondered how Emmerich had obtained a sample of Lacey's DNA. In the end it didn't matter he just needed a sample for himself.

"No way!" Lacey objected, her eyes staring at the needle in Owen's hands. "That thing is not coming any where near me! I'm not the cure, you already tested my blood."

Owen rolled his eyes. He'd been trying to get through to her for an hour. "Emmerich's sure you are and we tested it before you'd really developed. Maybe it's changed."  
"DNA doesn't just change Owen. I'm sorry but I'm not doing this!"

"Come on! It's one little prick!" Lacey smirked.

"Sentences like that are the reason I have a girlfriend." Owen laughed, putting the needle down on his desk.

"I'm going for some air." He ruffled her hair before leaving the lab, passing Toshiko on the way out.

"Hey sweetie." She was back to her lucid self. "What's wrong? Owen seemed pretty stressed."

"He thinks my DNA may be the cure. I'm not so sure-" Toshiko kissed her, silencing her doubts. The younger girl grinned, pushing her backwards on to Owen's desk. "I think we should forget about weevils and cures just for today. Go back to the apartment and forget the rest of the world." Toshiko moaned as the younger girl teasingly nipped at her neck. "Sounds great, but first-"

"Hey!" Lacey growled as the needle Owen had left on his desk sunk in to her thigh. Toshiko removed it once she had enough blood. The blonde pouted.

"Owen put you up to this didn't he?" The other woman nodded but grinned.  
"Now he has his sample Owen will leave you alone…with me all day." Lacey smiled overdramatically.

"I guess I could forgive you then…as long as you make it up to me." Toshiko smirked as she wrapped her arms around the blonde's waist, pulling her in close.

"Oh I think I can manage that."

Owen grunted, frustrated by the analysis of his daughter's blood. She showed signs of the weevil virus, even if they were dormant. She'd grow up and develop in to a weevil hybrid; but the virus was still dormant, so her blood wouldn't give him any indication of how Gwen's genes would affect her part weevil biology.

It could take years for the weevil in her to emerge. They didn't have time to wait. Taking Lacey's blood sample from the fridge he preyed Emmerich had been right. They couldn't go back and stop him being infected, but he could cure his daughter. Give her a chance at a normal life.

Several hours later Owen excitedly ran to Tosh and Lacey's apartment, pounding on the door. "Lacey! Open up! I've got good news." She opened the door, wrapped in a bed sheet and scowling.

"I've got news for you. I'm naked. Can't this wait?"

"I've done it!"

"Good for you; now go away and let me do it." Owen shook his head.

"I've found the cure!" The blonde's eyes lit up. "It was in your DNA all along, it must have just been dormant before."

"Fantastic. Give me half an hour and you can tell me all about it." She shooed him out of the apartment, still clutching to the sheet wrapped around her. When Tosh and Lacey finally arrived in the boardroom, giggling like teenagers, Jack smirked.

"Good of the two of you to finally show up." Gwen sat beside Owen looking over his shoulder at his notes, an absent smile on her face. Everyone was happy. "Over to you Owen."

The young doctor cleared his throat before addressing the team. "Alright. There is a cure. It's in Lacey's DNA. We could have an immunization made within months and a cure before the end of the year. We could completely eradicate the weevil virus."

"Ma'am, what are we going to do about the Torchwood girl?" Emmerich looked up from her laptop at one of the agents that had been attacked in Owen's apartment. His arm had been broken in three different places.

"Miss Cassidy is far too dangerous to try and apprehend out right. We'll need to make her turn herself in." She explained as though she were talking to a child, although considering the agent's concussion it was probably for the best anyway. "We take something precious to her. Something she'd give up everything for. Something like Toshiko Sato."


	20. Chapter 20

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** With the hope of way to stop the weevil virus the team begin to think about what will happen next.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **No more exams or college I'm free until September so I can finally spend time on my writing…well in between work.

"So you finally got your cure then." Gwen looked apprehensive about starting the conversation. Owen put down his wine glass and contemplated her expression.

"You want to go back don't you?" His voice was unusually quiet. An odd vulnerability present in his voice.

"I don't know." She admitted. It was pointless talking about it, there was no way back. "I like it here, with you. I mean without all the weevil stuff then things would be great; but I can't help missing my old life." Owen pulled her in close so that they were curled up together on the sofa, like a normal couple enjoying a night in.

"What if after I make the cure we quit Torchwood?"

"We can't just abandon Jack and the others!" She protested, unable to imagine losing three of the few people who knew she was actually alive.

"I'm not talking about moving and never coming back. Just settling down here. Maybe swap the flat for a house?"

"That all sounds a little too cosy for you." She teased but fell silent as she saw how serious he was.

"We could raise Anne together. Be a proper family."

She weighed up her options in her head. Hold on to a life where she had little outside of Torchwood, a place she couldn't go back to anyway, or finally let go and raise her daughter with a mature Owen Harper. "I'd like that." She finally ended the heavy silence.

"Tosh?"

"Hmm?" The older woman stirred, turning to face Lacey. "What is it?"

"I love you." The blonde whispered even though they were the only two in the room. Toshiko smiled and kissed her softly before settling back down on her pillow to go back to sleep. "After this is all over we'll take a holiday somewhere. Maybe Japan or California? Or both?" Lacey was talking to herself; the older woman was already fast asleep. Sighing she draped her arm protectively over the older woman's stomach. "We'll go away and you can get better."

Jack stood on the roof of one of the high-rise buildings looking down over the bay. The city was asleep with only a few cars on the roads and the odd take away and nightclub still open. Somewhere down in the quiet city would be his new team. He'd served Torchwood for over a century and he'd had countless people working for him over the years.

He could tell when his staff were getting ready to leave. Something in the way the looked, they dragged themselves to work each day, it was no longer a privilege to work for Queen and country but a chore. Gwen and Owen were growing up and settling down. It wouldn't be long before they decided to leave and buy some cottage in the country. Laughing Jack shook his head. On second thoughts he doubted either of them were particularly fond of the country anymore.

Lacey was a different matter though. She wanted to stay, he knew that, she was still young and determined to make a difference in the world, but her loyalties lay with Toshiko. The fragile woman didn't deserve to be locked up in the Hub all day long. She needed some quiet cottage in the country where she could rest and maybe recuperate from the torture she'd endured under the government's orders.

"You'll catch your death of cold." Jack laughed, making a small cloud of cold air linger in front of his mouth.

"Not likely. Why aren't you in bed with your lovely lady?" The blonde shrugged, averting his gaze.

"Couldn't sleep. I just keep thinking about how much worse she's getting. I'm terrified that one day she'll forget me; and she won't ever remember how much we love each other." She wrapped her arms around herself protectively, the cold wind biting at her bare arms. Jack removed his thick long coat and draped it over her shoulders. Lacey cuddled in to him, feeling safe and secure with him.

"When things have calmed down I'm taking Tosh away. Maybe for a few months." Jack nodded his approval.

"Take as long as you want. You two deserve a break."

"Thanks _uncle _Jack." She grinned and kissed his cheek. Although he wasn't a blood relative Jack, and the rest of Torchwood, were like family to her. They'd taken her in over a year ago and made her feel welcome, part of the team.

"Lacey I want to go for a walk." Toshiko declared the next morning, putting her laptop aside. The blonde put down the weights she'd been training with and stretched her muscles as the older woman went for her jacket.

"Remember when we used to do this all the time?" Toshiko quizzed. "When things got too much back at the Hub we'd just get up and leave, walk around for hours."

"Yeah." Lacey's reply was barely above a whisper. "I remember." She was amazed Toshiko could remember their walks; although she doubted she could remember half of the things they would talk about such as their families and their childhoods, past relationships and eventually their own. Anything and everything for hours on end.

"You terrified me at first." Toshiko admitted, laughing softly. "I had this young, smart and attractive girl practically stalking me." Lacey giggled, pulling her in close to steal a kiss.

"Aren't you glad you didn't get a restraining order?"

"Oi, love birds." Owen called out as he and Gwen approached them walking hand in hand. "We're off to get breakfast, you want anything?" Lacey shook her head, mirroring Toshiko's reaction and the other couple understood they wanted their alone time.

Owen and Gwen froze mid-conversation as they were headed towards café. A van screeched to a halt after ploughing straight in to Lacey. Toshiko screamed as the blonde slammed off the bonnet and landed on the ground with one of her ribs letting out a loud crunching sound on impact.

Owen and Gwen were running towards them but the men inside the van were already out and advancing on Toshiko. They dragged her kicking and screaming in to the back of the unmarked van. Lacey struggled to get back to her feet, but the blow from the van had cracked at least one rib and left her slightly concuss. She gasped for air as she lay crumpled in a heap on the ground, watching the van drive off with her girlfriend in the back of it.

Owen dropped beside her, quickly checking her over. "Get off me!" She screamed, pushing herself to her feet. She groaned as pain shot through her entire left side. Ignoring her protests Owen scooped her up in to his arms, carrying her to the Hub. He was thankful it was early and few people had been around to witness the hit and run.

An hour later Lacey was lying sedated in the hospital wing while the others huddled around the bedroom table. "It had to be Emmerich." Owen growled. "They took Tosh to get Lacey to turn herself in-"

"Then that's what I'll do." Lacey stood slumped against the doorframe, clutching her side and scowling. She'd fought the sedative to stay awake.

"We can't let them get you!" Owen objected protectively. "We'll find a way to save Tosh, but it won't involve sacrificing you!"

Jack sat in silence, contemplating their options while Owen and Lacey continued to argue. "Lacey's right." He finally interjected, silencing the others. "Tosh isn't well. She's vulnerable and probably terrified. Lacey's a big girl, she can handle herself."

"She's barely out of her teens!" Gwen objected, her motherly instincts taking over. "We can't just hand her over to them."

Lacey slumped to the floor, still leaning against the doorframe. "It's the only way." She muttered, looking away from Owen's piercing gaze. "I'd do anything for Toshiko. Whatever it takes."


	21. Chapter 21

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** With Toshiko gone the team must decide whether to risk Lacey by saving her or leaving her.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **I've gone from working 7 hours a week to almost 17 and I'm doing the same next week…so I'm still stuck for time to write.

"Miss Sato, welcome back." Elliot Emmerich watched as Toshiko sat huddled in the padded cell, her knees tucked protectively in to her chest. "Don't worry this time we don't require any information from you. We simply want Miss Cassidy to pay a visit…" She trailed off as she realised Toshiko was not sobbing as she'd first thought, but laughing.

"She won't come." She looked up defiantly, no trace of madness or vulnerability on her face; like the last three years hadn't happened, like she was the same resilient Toshiko. "I've made sure of it."

Lacey looked puzzled as she pulled out her mobile and found a text from Toshiko, it had been sent while she'd been in the middle of being abducted. It was simply a Url. Ignoring the others she logged on to the computer at Toshiko's workstation and typed in the Internet address. The others fell silent as a pre-recorded video appeared on the screen.

"Lacey, sweetie, if you're watching this then I'm in danger. Once I found out you were the cure I knew Emmerich would come after me. My brave strong Lacey, I'm your only weakness." The blonde watched silently as Toshiko spoke, looking more alert and certain than she had in months. She understood what she was asking. "I don't want you to try and save me. You must protect yourself. You're the key to ending this. Everything we have endured, everyone who has suffered or died…the only way to justify that suffering is for you to survive, to find the cure. So please sweetheart, don't come after me." The screen went blank as the video ended, Toshiko's image disappearing from sight.

"She's right." Owen hated himself for saying it, but Toshiko had a point. Lacey was more important in the grand scheme of things. If it was between Gwen and finally getting the thing he'd been fighting for for three years he wasn't sure which he would choose. He wouldn't do it lightly but he wouldn't completely disregard her sacrifice either.

"What if it was your daughter?" Her question caught him completely off guard.

"That's not fair."

"Neither is asking me to give up Toshiko!" The blonde objected, her gaze dark and stormy. "It's my fault she was caught by Emmerich. They tortured her for days Owen! She barely survived and if I don't save her this time then she won't survive…and I'll be alone. Again."

Seeing her wide-eyed and pleading Owen gave in and nodded. "Then I'll help, but first we need as much blood from you as we can get."

"Fine. Take it now, but we're leaving tonight."

"Do you really think she'll stay away?" Toshiko ignored Emmerich, staring silently at the padded wall. It reminded her of being locked up with Ianto, trying to reassure him everything was all right while she'd looked for a way out. She'd rather face cannibals than Emmerich. "You know she'll come. So will the rest of them. Then we'll have our cure, the founding father of the Weevils, the mysterious Jack Harkness and-"

"Owen won't bring Gwen anywhere near you." She sneered. Emmerich scowled. Gwen had always been a soft spot for the agent. She'd been obsessed with her beyond the search for a cure.

"She'll come, after all she's been rather active lately, for a corpse. I think it's time you explained how."

"Gwen." She looked up as Owen entered the boardroom where she'd been sitting on her own for the last hour. "We're leaving in two hours…it's up to you whether you come or not. I know nothing I can say will stop you. Just watch your back." Gwen nodded, pulling herself to her feet.

"So what's the plan anyway?"

Owen explained the plan in relatively simple terms. They'd dress as B.A.D. agents and infiltrate their Cardiff base to break their missing member out. He forgot to mention how heavily secured the place was. She and Lacey dressed as agents in plain black uniforms with caps pushed down over their faces, their fake I.D pinned to their jackets.

The building was crawling with security and armed agents, yet no one bothered to ask for any identification while they entered the front door, wrestling with a restrained weevil. They put it down to luck, but were proved to be wrong. A swarm of agents waited for them on the other side of the door. "Get the Weevil and Miss Cassidy to the cells. I'll take care of Miss Cooper." The agent whose arm Owen had broken grabbed her roughly and marched her through the complex to an office on the third floor. He pushed her inside and then slammed the door shut.

Gwen gasped as her cap was yanked off and thrown aside. "That's better." Emmerich grinned before taking a seat at her desk. "So Toshiko informed me of what they did. I guess you don't know me yet. I'm Elliot Emmerich." She extended her hand but Gwen ignored it. "I missed you after you died."

"I might not know you but I know what you've done. You tortured Toshiko."

"Part of the job I'm afraid. We used to be on the same side you know. I used to be a DI-"

"And now you're no better than the criminals you used to arrest." Gwen protested. Emmerich scoffed.

"I'm no different than Torchwood. We both want a cure…"

"We don't kill and torture innocent people."

Emmerich laughed again. "How many innocents have died thanks to Torchwood?" Gwen fell silent. It was true people died because of Torchwood, but they did their best to protect innocent people; they didn't torture them.

"It doesn't matter what you think of me or the organization Gwen. We not only have the entire Torchwood team but the cure too." Emmerich stated matter-of-factly. "All that remains is what we do with you. I'm willing to offer you a job as an agent; working for the right." She held out her hand, offering her the deal. Gwen slapped her, defiantly standing her ground.

"I already work for the right side."


	22. Chapter 22

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** The team try to regroup and escape but Emmerich is determined to stop them.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"You're an idiot."

"Yeah but you still love me." Lacey smirked as the cell door closed behind her. "Let's get out of here then you can call me an idiot."

"What about me?" Owen shouted from the cell next door. Lacey rolled her eyes.

"Sure, we may have to survive first." She replied as she inspected the cell. "C'mon Tosh. There's no cell that can hold you, right?" She'd listened to her girlfriend recant endless stories of past field missions where she'd managed to escape countless prisons. The older woman got to her feet and began looking around the cell.

After a few moments she settled by a point on the door. "I don't think these were designed to hold weevils…or anything more than humans. If you can ram the door at these two points it should break the hinges." Lacey nodded and backed as far in to the cell as possible. Building up speed she charged at the metal door, her shoulder ramming in to the first spot the other woman had indicated. She grunted as she felt the impact of the metal door smashing against her shoulder. Ignoring the pain she charged again and smashed against the other hinge. Toshiko inspected the door and grinned. "Alright, now just give it one hard kick in the centre." Lacey did as she was instructed and delivered the blow with as much forced as she could muster. After knocking out the guards and collecting their things they opened Owen's cell.

"We have to find Gwen and then we're getting the hell out of here!" Owen ordered since their leader was off slipping in to the laboratories to destroy all traces evidence of Lacey and her DNA. As they ran towards the stairwell Owen frowned. "Why are you limping?" Lacey rolled her eyes as Toshiko helped support her, wrapping her arms around the younger girl and taking some of her weight.

Stopping at the stairwell Owen looked apprehensive about going up to the roof to wait for Jack as they'd all planned. After all Gwen being taken hadn't been part of the plan. "Go on up." He ordered the two women. "I'm going for Gwen."

"I'll help-" Lacey groaned as she tried to put her full weight on her foot.

"You look after your own girl." He ruffled her hair like he usually did just to annoy her, trying to act like it was just another day. Inside he was terrified that Gwen was already dead or worse. He didn't know if he'd be strong enough to cope if she ended up like Toshiko.

He left the two women to make their way up the stairwell to the roof and went in search of Emmerich and Gwen. "Thank you." Toshiko whispered in to Lacey's ear as they stopped to let the younger girl rest.

"For being an idiot?" Lacey grinned, pulling the older woman down to steal a kiss. "I could never let you go Tosh. I'd give my life for you. I swear." Her severity sent chills through the older woman as her lover clung to her. She knew how intense and determined the blonde could be, but the complete honesty in her promise still took her by surprise.

"No you wouldn't." She scorned, hugging her tightly. "I couldn't cope without you. Who'd remind me what my name was?" She laughed, earning a small giggle from Lacey.

Gwen was amazed that Emmerich did not hit her back. She didn't even raise her voice. She simply sat down at her desk and sighed. "Don't you see Gwen? Torchwood can't win, they're not the untouchable ghosts they used to be back in your day…you're just five insignificant people fighting a losing war-"

"You forgot about the old man in Glasgow." Both women looked up as Jack stood by the open door, his Webley in his hand. "Technically there are six of us." Gwen got to her feet, grinning.

"We won't lose this war…and I won't abandon my friends."

Owen smirked as he heard Jack's voice over his headset. "I've got Gwen, we're heading out. What's your status?"

"We're on our way up to the roof. Tosh and Lacey are already there. We'll meet you in the car." Owen headed back to the stairwell and towards the roof. Once he was there Owen pulled out the supplies they needed to scale down the building. After setting the equipment up he strapped them all in to harnesses. Just as Owen stepped on to the ledge the roof door slammed open, revealing Emmerich, holding Gwen's headset in one hand and her gun, trained on Owen, in the other. She was sick of being humiliated by Gwen Cooper and Torchwood. She'd make her pay.

The sound of the door slamming against the building caused Owen to jump in shock, causing him to lose his balance and fall over the ledge. As he fell he heard the sound of a single gunshot, then another three before the sound of the roof door slamming shut. "Lacey! Tosh!" He screamed as he hit the ground and the two women didn't follow. Jack and Gwen rushed to his side, concerned that the others hadn't followed, but oblivious to the gunshots.

They watched as one of the women descended, cradling the other's unmoving form. They landed in front of them, a tangle of limbs. Owen knelt beside them, checking the unmoving woman for a pulse. He shook his head, there was no sign of life and a pool of blood was forming from a bullet wound to her chest. She was dead, cradled in her frozen lover's arms.


	23. Chapter 23

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Grief takes different forms.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

The funeral, if it could be called that, took place later that night. The four surviving members of Torchwood three stood solemnly in front of the catacombs that housed their former comrades; Ianto, Suzie, and all the men and women who had come before them. As Gwen watched Jack shut the door of the steal tomb she shuddered. Her own dead body lay somewhere inside one of the cold metal coffins. She guessed Owen was thinking the same thing as his grip on her hand tightened.

Had the last time he'd stood in the catacombs been to mourn her? And the time before that to lay poor Ianto to rest? Gwen felt like a fraud standing among her team-mates, having experienced little of the suffering and loss they had over the last three years. She had hardly known their newly departed co-worker and yet she'd been Owen's best friend. Jack nodded at the others, indicating for them to leave the grieving woman alone.

"She hasn't cried." Gwen pointed out. "Not once. She hasn't said a word either. Just sat in silence staring at nothing. I think she's lost it." Owen shrugged.

"To be honest I don't think she's started grieving yet. It's like she can't let herself feel the pain or she'll just break down." He sighed as he pulled Gwen in close. "When this is all over, when she can finally just grieve and cry she'll have a years worth of pain to deal with. Including losing the girl she loves. She's gonna fall apart."

"We'll be there for her." Gwen promised, knowing how close he and the other woman had always been.

"Thank you." The subject of their conversation suddenly appeared beside them. "Can I stay with the two of you tonight? I don't want to stay in the apartment on my own."

"Of course." Owen released Gwen and wrapped his arms around the young blonde. "Whatever you need." She needed Toshiko back; she needed the living embrace to be from her girlfriend, not Owen. Another thing she needed was for Emmerich to suffer for what she'd done to Toshiko. And that was something she could get.


	24. Chapter 24

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Things grow harder for the team as Emmerich and the agents up the pressure on them.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

After spending the night on Owen's sofa, staring at the ceiling and unable to close her eyes, Lacey crept out early, taking one of Owen's hooded sweatshirts to fight off the morning chill. She made her way to the bay, hoping to sit and watch the turbulent water before entering the hub. She found a ton of people and a few news crews gathered around three people by the Millennium Centre. Agent Emmerich stood with two other agents, addressing the people and the cameras.

"It is with great joy that I reveal to you all today that we are close to finding a cure to the weevil pandemic. Soon your families, your friends, your children…they can all be cured and released from Government holding facilities." The crowd around Emmerich erupted as she spoke. Lacey froze. Jack was supposed to have destroyed everything they had from her DNA. Scowling she pulled the hood of Owen's jacket up, letting it hang down over her face. Weaving through the crowd to hear better among the cheering she settled next to an old man who always bought the morning paper and read it by the bay before work.

"The cure should have been made within the week, but thanks to Torchwood it will takes another few weeks to complete." The mood of the crowd changed at the mention of Torchwood. "Last night the terrorist group known as Torchwood broke in to a government facility and destroyed some of the work that had already been carried out, but not all of it. We will still have our cure. We will heal this nation!" The crowd erupted again but a few people here and there did not cheer.

"One of the extremists tried to kill me last night and I had no other choice but to shoot them. Torchwood grows weaker by the day and I urge you not to support these dangerous anarchists-"

"Dangerous?" Lacey threw back the hood; her blonde locks instantly giving away her identity. "You don't know the half of it." She pulled her gun from the waistband of her jeans and pointed it at Emmerich.

The two agents beside her nervously fingered their own un-holstered guns. Emmerich simply grinned like the cat that got the cream. "See what I mean?" She addressed the crowd that had backed away from the young blonde. "Nothing more than lunatics playing with guns. They're a menace and a threat to our society. Which is why the government have released the identities of all four remaining Torchwood members and their affiliates. We urge members of the public to report their whereabouts to the police and not to harbour these maniacs." She barely even glanced at the gun pointed at her head. She knew she couldn't have the blonde shot, they still needed her, but equally the younger girl couldn't shoot her, at least not in public; it would prove her point about Torchwood.

The old man with the paper, a Mr Henson, if Lacey remembered correctly began to laugh, loudly and heartily. "Torchwood is the only protection this country has!" He patted Lacey on the back approvingly. "People like you are the menace!" Others around him began to mumble and some of the crowd began to call out in support of the supposed to be secret organization. Lacey grinned, the frustration on Emmerich's face evident.

With the cameras still rolling she began to shout. "Torchwood. Outside the government. Beyond the police! " Quickly over half the crowd began to join in, over twenty voices accompanying her in her chanting. She grinned as she pocketed her gun and addressed Emmerich. "Most of them don't even know what we are and they still support Torchwood. They know we're not the danger. You are. And I swear I'll personally end that threat."

"With a gun? Aren't you the big brave girl?" Emmerich wasn't one to be intimidated easily, but as manic looking grin spread slowly over the younger girl's face she had to stop herself from shuddering.

"That'd be too easy for you. You're gonna see how dangerous I can be Emmerich."

"What were you thinking?" Jack roared as she finally entered the Hub a few hours later. She ignored him and took a seat at Toshiko's desk, idly playing with computer component that had been left out, undoubtedly part of one of Toshiko's many computers or machines that littered her desk. She would never get the chance to finish it. "Lacey, hunny, I know you're suffering…but we can't threaten agents on national news. It makes people think we're the bad guys. We can't afford to pull any stunts, not after this morning. Our pictures are all over the news, the Internet, everywhere. Half our contacts have been arrested-"

"Are Rhys and Sarah ok?" Lacey finally put down the circuit board.

"They're fine. I went to see them as soon as I heard the news. They're all packed and they're leaving for America tonight."

"I want to see them." Both Lacey and Gwen declared at the same time. Jack nodded.

"Make it quick. We've got work to do."

"So I guess this is goodbye then." Rhys stood awkwardly beside Gwen, unsure of what to say or how to act. "Take care of yourself."

"You too." Gwen choked out, tears threatening to spill out. He was going to be completely out of her life. Although she'd chosen Owen she had no doubt that her future-self hadn't made the decision lightly. She still loved Rhys, but it wasn't how it used to be when they'd first got together, it was like they'd been best friends living together for years and occasionally sleeping together. She wasn't just giving up Rhys either.

She held baby Anne in her arms, watching her peacefully sleeping, unaware of the chaos of the world she lived in. Lacey emerged from the living room after saying goodbye to Sarah and her son. She hugged Rhys as he gave his condolences for Toshiko. Gwen remained silent, holding the baby. She hadn't even known Rhys and Lacey knew each other.

"Look after them." She ordered earning a smile from Rhys.

"You look after yourself. No stupid stunts." Lacey rolled her eyes as though it were Jack lecturing her but nodded.

"Do you want to hold her?" Gwen asked as Lacey looked down at the baby. Shaking her head she tucked her hands in to her pockets.

"I'm not really a baby person. I'll be in the car."

Sighing Gwen eventually handed Anne back over to Rhys, her adoptive father. "You're a great dad." She smiled, placing a kiss on his cheek. "She's lucky to have you."

"She'll be alright Gwen. I promise."

After leaving Rhys and her daughter for the last time Gwen made her way to the car parked outside where Lacey was waiting. Sitting in the front passenger seat she was close to breaking down in tears. "She'll be alright." Lacey surprised her by pulling her in for a quick hug. "You're doing the right thing."

"Am I?" She sobbed in to her shoulder. "Then why do I feel so guilty?"

Lacey shrugged. "You're a mom. Parents are supposed to feel guilty." Smiling Gwen nodded.

"I suppose…what are your parents like?" It was a small insignificant question, but the Welshwoman knew little about the blonde and in light of recent events she decided she wanted to know more. Lacey's gaze clouded over as she thought of how to answer.

"They were great. I had a happy childhood…I was spoilt rotten, my older brother hated that I got more attention than he did."

"Do you still see them much?"

"No." The blonde no longer sounded nostalgic, but bitter. "They're dead. My brother too. I lost them when I was seventeen. Spent a couple years on my own then Owen found me…he brought me in to Torchwood. They became my family. You, Ianto, Jack…all of you. I don't take kindly to people trying to hurt my family. That's why Emmerich has to pay."

"She will sweetheart. She will."


	25. Chapter 25

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary:** Gwen gets a history lesson in weevils.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"Torchwood needs to be stopped!" Jack and the others sat watching the lunchtime news as the chief of police addressed the public. "They are a menace to society! I urge you not to approach these radicals, but if you have any information relating to their whereabouts then please contact the police immediately. Remember, it is thanks to these terrorists that the Weevil virus exists, now they wish to prevent us from curing a disease which has effected millions…well I say no more-"

Jack switched the monitor off and sighed. Within hours of Emmerich's news conference their contacts had either been arrested or had gone underground. Torchwood, the great untouchable agency, was on its own. They'd even arrested the old man in Torchwood Two. "What do we do?" Gwen broke the uneasy silence.

"We fight." Jack snapped as though the answer was obvious. "We're Torchwood damn it!"

"They're right though." Owen looked sullenly down at his feet. "Weevils exist because of Torchwood; because of me."

"You keep saying that!" Gwen looked frustrated as she raised her voice. "What the hell happened? How can you be responsible for all this? The Weevils are from another planet. You told me that!" She rounded on Jack, her cheeks flared in anger and confusion.

"We thought they did…I thought they did." His gaze dropped and he looked as defeated as the cockney doctor. "I was wrong. They came from Owen. All of them-"

"How? Tell me!"

EARLY 2008 "_The meteor hit twenty minutes ago!" Toshiko informed the others from the back of the SUV while Owen drove like a madman through early Monday morning traffic. "It's in an isolated area of countryside, nothing around for miles."  
"Oh joy, more bloody countryside." Owen grumbled as he manoeuvred around a people carrier at eighty miles an hour._

"_Don't worry sweetie, just take the keys out of the car and everything will be fine." Gwen teased earning a scowl from the disgruntled Doctor. "The police have been instructed to put up road blocks in a three mile radius."_

"_Good. Remember people this could just be a meteor or it could be an alien ship, keep your wits about you."_

_They arrived at the crash site and carried their equipment towards the small crater that had been created from the impact. "Initial scans show no sign of life-" Toshiko abruptly stopped as the piece of space rock, no bigger than a football began to crack and smoke. _

"_Masks on!" Jack ordered even though the whole team were already grabbing their gasmasks and pulling them over their faces._

_  
Gwen froze as she found a gaping hole in her mask. Seeing it Owen quickly removed his mask and placed it over her head, putting her useless mask over his face in attempt to have some defence against the gas at least. Placing one hand over the hole and the other held Gwen's mask in place, stopping her from removing it to help him. _

_Jack looked up to find Owen protectively guarding Gwen; he failed to notice the gaping hole in his mask. It wasn't until he saw Owen clutching at his throat that he realised something was wrong. _

_Owen's lungs were on fire. The gas had enveloped them and the torn mask had proved useless. Gasping he fell to his knees, still clutching his throat. Gwen slung his arm around her shoulders and dragged him as far as she could before they both collapsed to the damp grass. Jack and the others quickly followed to check on their team-mate. Owen wheezed as he inhaled one sharp lungful of clean air after another. "It's…localised." He gasped in between breaths. "Short range dispersal." His throat ached and itched as he forced the words out. _

"_It seems to have stopped." Toshiko informed them as she conducted scans of the area. "I'll place the meteor in a secure unit for testing and collect soil samples… We'll need to test Owen too." _

"_Negative?" Jack quizzed. "You're sure?" _

"_There was no effect on the surrounding area and the meteor is clean…if something was inside it then…"_

"_It's in Owen." _

"_How are you feeling?" Gwen stood behind the clear glass wall that housed Owen in a sterile airtight room. _

"_Could do with a lemsip." He smiled, unable to force a laugh from his swollen throat. "So am I safe?" Gwen shrugged, unable to give him an answer. They'd taken blood samples from him, but they were still waiting for the results._

"_You're absolutely fine." Jack appeared beside Gwen. "Besides from a sore throat you've got a clean bill of health." He entered the code to open the door to the room and let Owen out. "Tosh thinks it was just hot air from the impact. You and Gwen can have the day off. You can play doctors and nurses." Jack smirked as Gwen took hold of Owen's hand and shook her head at him._

"_I agree. I need to spend the rest of the day in bed."_

"_Oh really?" Gwen pulled him in for a quick kiss, hesitant to linger with his throat still being tender. _

_It wasn't until three days later that Owen began to feel strange. His stomach churned at the thought of eating and he felt restless as he lay beside Gwen in bed. She was fast asleep, her soft pale flesh illuminated in the moonlight that streamed through the glass wall of his apartment. He found himself licking his lips as he ran his hand along her jaw line. She batted his hand away in her sleep and turned over, mumbling something incoherent. _

_He had to get out of the flat. He could feel the urge to sink his teeth in to her flesh rising within him. Pulling on his jeans and a jacket he quickly left and found himself wandering the streets of Cardiff aimlessly. That was until a drunken young man approached him, swaying on his feet and grinning. _

"_Y' alright mate?" He sounded English; probably a northerner on holiday who'd got separated from his friends._

"_I'm fine, mate." The man barely had time to open his mouth to scream before Owen was upon him, sinking his teeth in to the man's throat and tearing a chunk of flesh from it. _

_The young northerner screamed and pushed him away, completely sober and scared for his life. Shocked by what he'd done Owen headed back to the flat but then stopped. He couldn't go back to Gwen, not covered in blood and craving human flesh. _

_He decided to go to the Hub. Jack would be there and maybe he could offer some explanation why he'd suddenly become a cannibal. "Bloody countryside!" He cursed._

_When day broke Owen eventually stumbled in to the hub, covered in blood that wasn't his own and his teeth elongated like a wolf's. "Owen!" Gwen screamed as he dropped to his knees, exhausted and in pain. _

_Ianto helped carry him to the sofa where they lay him down and checked him over, believing the blood on his clothes to be his own. "What happened?"_

"_Dunno." He mumbled, his brow feverish and his eyes rolling back in his head. _

"_Must have been some night." Jack stood with his arms crossed and his expression grim. "Thirty eight people were bitten by some sort of wild animal last night. Twenty of those later went on to bite others. If you're infected with something then almost sixty other people have it."_

"_I couldn't…needed flesh…Gwen…" He rambled, the fever affecting his mind. He groaned in pain as he felt pain surge through his entire body. "Make it stop!" He screamed, writhing in agony. Jack pushed Ianto aside and delivered a solid punch to Owen's jaw, knocking him out._

"What?" He questioned at Gwen's furious glare. "He's better off unconscious for now."

"_Jack!" _

"_I know Tosh, I'm sorry I hit Owen." Jack rolled his eyes, still facing Gwen. _

"_Jack!" Ianto shouted more insistently. _

"_For God's sake I didn't hit him that hard-" He was cut off as Ianto grabbed his arm and forced him to look down at Owen; or what had been the young Doctor. _

_Now in his place lay an abomination. A mixture of weevil and human. His hair was receding and his fangs and claws growing. His face became twisted and barely recognisable. "Oh sh-" His feral eyes snapped open, the beast he had become seemed barely able to recognise them. Sitting up he growled at Jack who had reached for his Webley and was pointing it at the creature that had bee Owen Harper. _

"_No Jack, don't! Owen…" The weevil turned towards Gwen, looking curiously at her until he sniffed at the air and then seemed to settle, content that he wasn't in any danger. He didn't see Toshiko standing behind him with a heavy book, and once he realised she was there it was too late. She brought the thick text crashing down against the back of his skull, temporarily knocking him out. The team stared down at the weevil as it began to writhe and twitch. Within moments it was Owen Harper again, fully human. _

"_He's…he's a weevil." Toshiko choked out. "How is this possible?" They all turned to Jack, their faithful leader, for advice. _

"_It's started."_

"Within weeks over half of Britain was infected. Only a handful of Weevils were like Owen." Jack explained to the shocked Gwen. "There were microbes on the meteor, just simple bacteria…but when they mixed with Owen's DNA it created the weevil virus. Everyone he bit became infected and those with DNA close enough to his own became Higher Weevils with the ability to retain their humanity. The rest became the weevils you knew back in '07."

"You knew?" Gwen quizzed, picking up on Jack's guilt. "Didn't you! Was that what you were always warning us about? The twenty-first century is when it all changes?" He nodded solemnly.

"I met a man who was a higher weevil, he fell through the rift and told me what he was after he changed from a weevil to a man right in front of me. He told me when it would start but he had no idea what caused it. I had no idea that Owen's DNA would be responsible for over three quarters of the population becoming weevils." The Captain admitted, a rare instance of acknowledgment that he did not in fact know everything. "What I do know is that Emmerich wants to 'cure' all the surviving weevils, the ones that didn't keep their humanity. She's trying to resole monsters…these creatures have killed people they once cared about, countless innocents. Giving them their humanity back would destroy them. We can't let that happen."


	26. Chapter 26

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary: **Gwen feels alienated from the remaining members of Torchwood and worries what they're not telling her.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"He knew." Gwen repeated for the second time, still sounding as disbelieving as the first time she'd said it. "He could have stopped this all from happening! Ianto! Toshiko! All of it!"

"He didn't know everything." Owen sighed, trying to calm the near hysterical woman down."

"Did you know he knew?" She looked even more shocked he hadn't told her himself.

"I found out when you did, well back in '08 in when you heard the first time. We all got mad and made up, so can we drop it?"

He sighed as the Welshwoman began to sob in to her hands. "Look I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you." She shook her head as he sat beside her and held her comfortingly.

"I'm sick of not knowing anything." She cried. "You all just keep forgetting to tell me things I need to know. So, is there anything else?" He looked up at her and nodded.

"Loads…but I can't tell you."

"How am I supposed to live here, try and resettle my life, when you won't even tell me about what I've missed-"

"Because it would send you as mad as the rest of us." He answered honestly, his slightly feral gaze fixed upon her.

"Least I'd fit in."

He laughed, the intensity in his gaze completely gone, and kissed her forehead. "You're still mad enough to qualify for membership." He teased. After only a few weeks of living in the future she'd been physically and emotionally pushed to her limits. She wanted it to be over and as much as she loved the older, more mature Owen she wanted her old life back. She didn't know how much longer she could survive in the bewildering future.

"You want to go back don't you?" It was like he could use the low-level psychic aptitude to read her mind, but it was written all over her face. The way she'd look a million miles away when sitting in the Hub. Remembering the way things had been; it was only weeks ago to her, yet years ago to the rest of the team.

"Can you blame me?"

He shook his head. They'd brought her in to a future in which almost all of her closest friends were dead, insane or simply gone. Dumped her in at the deep end and expected her to stay afloat. "Just give me a chance." He pleaded with her, looking as vulnerable as he had in that cage while the weevil had been attacking him. "If things don't get better after all of this is over then I swear I'll find a way to get you back." She nodded, accepting his promise. She wanted to stay with him, a loving Owen Harper she thought could never exist, but she couldn't see things getting any better. Since she'd arrived in the future her life had gone from bad to worse.

"Sorry to interrupt but I need you both in the boardroom ASAP." Jack called from the top of the stairs, Lacey by his side.

"What's wrong?" Gwen quizzed, pulling away from Owen's embrace and getting to her feet.

"There's something you both need to see!"

The screen on the boardroom wall was once again filled with the image of the evening news. Emmerich stood in front of the cameras, a snarling weevil being restrained behind her. "After hours of hard work my dedicated team have finally completed their work, despite Torchwood's best efforts to destroy it, we have finally made the cure. Observe!" She took a hypodermic needle and approached the struggling weevil. Unceremoniously sinking it in to the weevil's arm she plunged the contents in to its blood stream. Owen froze, as though the needle had been put in his own arm and his eyes became vacant and glazed over.

"He's turned." He spoke before the weevil had even began to change, but sure enough the weevil on the screen began to twitch and shake as its fangs receded, its hair grew and it's muscles depleted until finally a human man in his thirties stood in its place. He looked around widely at the people and the media; fear evident on his face.

"It's alright." Emmerich reassured him as her staff wrapped a blanket around his still shaking body and helped him to stay on his feet. "You're free now."

"Tell me that wasn't real!" Jack shouted, his face contorted with anger and fear. "Was he a higher?" All eyes fell on Owen as he shook his head.

"The cure worked. I felt him change." He choked out, the shock of the experience still leaving him struggling for breath. It had been like the weevil had been ripped out of his very being once it had began to revert to its humanity.

"This is not good people."

"Surely this is a good thing?" Gwen quizzed, after all a cure was why they'd brought her to the future.

"We want a cure to immunize humans, to stop the virus from spreading." Jack corrected her. "Curing a lower level would be like giving a wild lion a conscience. There's nothing we can do for them."

"We can kill Emmerich?" Lacey suggested as though she were simply deciding where to eat rather than talking about killing someone. It worried Gwen how easily the young woman could suggest such a thing. Even before Toshiko's death she hadn't been the most well balanced individual. Jack shook his head.

"We kill her and someone else takes her place. Not to mention the bad press we'll get from it. Let's get one thing straight people." He stood with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out, demanding attention and obedience. "We're terrorists to the rest of the world. There are only four of us against the big bad world."


	27. Chapter 27

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary: **

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"Here's what they don't want you to know." Jack slammed a large file down on the boardroom table. "Twenty three people, who up until a few days ago were weevils, have committed suicide." Owen barely listened to the others as they discussed the problem. Lacey looked as distracted as he was.

"I'm going out for a bit. Things to do and all that." Jack tried to object but Owen silenced him, he needed some time away from Torchwood. "You coming Lacey?" She looked up from her pink Converse trainers to face him.

"Whatever." She mumbled, pulling herself to her feet. They took the lift up to the bay and silently made their way to the water's edge. Lacey laughed softly to herself as she looked down at the soothing water lapping against the edge.

"Remember when Tosh pushed me in?" She smiled but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "She didn't know I couldn't swim." Owen nodded, still able to feel the cold water slamming against his body after he'd dived in to save her. He'd spent the rest of the week teaching her how to swim.

Sitting by the water's edge the young blonde tucked her knees in to her chest and sighed. "We'll never have those days again." Her gaze travelled to the sun that was setting far off in the distance.

"No." Owen admitted, making no attempt to sugar coat the truth. "We're still a family. We can deal with this-"  
"No." Lacey got to her feet, frowning. "You and Gwen are going to leave. You'll start a family and forget all about me!" Owen laughed, taking hold of her hand and giving it a tight squeeze.

"Forget you?" He scoffed. "Not bloody likely."

"What will you do? If Owen and I do leave?" Gwen asked, catching Jack by surprise.

"I've got Lacey. She's a one woman Torchwood." The Welshwoman looked puzzled by his answer so he elaborated.

"I taught Lacey everything she knows about aliens, and trust me that's a lot. Tosh taught her everything she knew about technology, human and alien. She's in her third year of univeristy studying medicine…hell her coffee's almost as good as Ianto's." He laughed heartily.

"So she's the Torchwood prodigy then? How did she join?"

"Long story. Let's save it for another day, 'k?" Gwen rolled her eyes. She was about to object to the continuing secrecy when Lacey and Owen returned.

"Hey Gwen, can you give me a hand getting some stuff from the apartment?" Gwen agreed knowing the blonde couldn't face her and Toshiko's apartment on her own, but she also knew the blonde was the most likely person to answer her questions.

The apartment was on one of the lower level of the hub, a self-sustained home with two bedrooms. There were computer parts and various hi-tech gadgets, including games consoles, all over the living room. "Tosh hated me leaving stuff around the place…I just love taking things apart to learn how it works." Gwen smiled reassuringly, following her to the bedroom to gather some things. Looking in the spare bedroom she noticed a ton of computers, machinery and alien technology. Stepping in to the bedroom she found Lacey frozen to the spot. The blonde was staring down at the unmade bed.

"You'd think she was just in the shower or making coffee…"

"Get your things sweetheart." Gwen ordered softly, trying to get her out of her dazed state. Nodding the blonde opened the wardrobe and pulled out a holdall that she began to fill. Leaving her to it Gwen entered the living room. She noticed a photo of the team framed on the coffee table. She guessed it was almost a year old as she was pregnant and Ianto was still present. What struck her the most was her hair, long shoulder length chocolate coloured locks framed her face. She looked strikingly familiar.

"Guess I was a little different back then." Lacey took hold of the frame and sat it back down. "Nineteen, almost twenty…I was completely alone until I met you lot. My family." The pride in her words reflected her expression.

"It must have been hard being so young and on your own." Gwen sympathised. "I'm terrified Anne will be on her own. She's going to grow up never knowing me or Owen… she won't even know why we named her or how hard it was to give her up."

Lacey laughed involuntarily. "I remember you two arguing over what to call her. You wanted to name her after your mother and he wanted to name her after his gran."

"Guess I won." Gwen laughed. "What's his gran's name anyway?" Lacey looked around nervously and shrugged.

"I can't remember." She brushed off the question and fled to the bathroom to get her toothbrush. When she returned she found Gwen holding something else. Her Torchwood I.D.

"What does the A.H stand for? Your middle name?"

"Anne." Lacey mumbled dropping her bag, "I was named after my gran." Gwen froze, looking from the young blonde to the teenage brunette in the photo frame.  
"I never noticed how much you look like Owen." She finally found her voice. "So that's why you're so close?"

"You're related. Are you his sister? Or his cousin or something?"

"Or something." Lacey mumbled, sinking on to the couch with Gwen following. "Everyone always says I've got his nose and his smile…but I've got my mother's eyes and her hair. I'm not Owen's sister and my name's not Lacey Cassidy either. It's Lacey Anne Harper."


	28. Chapter 28

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Summary: **Gwen finally learns the truth.

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Short update on a rare day off from work.

"H-how can you be his daughter?" Gwen stammered. "You're twenty one…Owen's only in his thirties. How could he have a child at fifteen?"

"I was born in 2009, right now I'm nine months old and living with my adoptive parents, Rhys and Sarah Williams." Lacey explained while hugging her legs protectively. "Owen figured that my blood would be the cure…seeing as the night I was conceived was the night he bit you. So he used the device to travel to 2019 and brought me back. I was the first, and only, weevil hybrid. My DNA wasn't the same when I was nineteen, now that I'm twenty one it's finished mutating so it's useable for a cure. But when we first tested it it wasn't. So they kept on trying with your DNA…then you died." She wiped tears away from her eyes as she felt Gwen shift beside her and wrap her arms around the young blonde.  
"Jack offered to let me go back, but I decided to stay…I had nothing in the future. Here I had you and my dad, and Tosh…"

Gwen remained silent as Lacey spoke and tried to digest everything she'd just been told. "I knew there was something. At first I thought you and him were together…"  
"Yeah I know, that's why I told you that stuff about you being jealous…Jack wouldn't let me or Owen tell you who I really was, said it would change the past…I wanted to tell you so much. I just wanted my mom back." Sobs wracked her body as she clung to her biological mother. Growing up with the Williams had been fine; they'd always doted on her and treat her like their real daughter, but she had always craved the love and attention of her real parents.

"Am I interrupting something?" Owen paused at the living room door, his hands shoved deeply in to the pocket of his jeans.

"You're a git Owen Harper." Gwen scowled as she clung to her daughter, but she relented and held out her hand for him to take.

Jack knew what was going on as soon as he saw the three of them all together half an hour later. "I wondered how long it would take before one of you would tell her." He stood defiantly in front of them, his arms crossed and scowling.

"Look Jack-"

Jack cut Owen off before he could defend them. "It's about time you told her." He grinned, earning a hug from Lacey. "If Gwen's staying then we're going to have to be upfront and honest from now on."  
"No more secrets?" Gwen asked, her expression and tone both stern.

"No more secrets."


	29. Chapter 29

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Jack sat in his office looking at the small metal green orb in his hand. He'd ordered Ianto not to tell the others what he knew, he didn't want Owen shouting his mouth off about using the device to get Gwen back or Toshiko lecturing him on the rights of weevils. It was tempting to take a trip to the future, to see if it was his future-self that had taken Gwen, but he knew that using it would drain its power supply and risk leaving Gwen and himself stranded.

"When will she be back?" Ianto stood hesitantly by his office door. "Gwen. When will she come back?" Jack didn't even know why she'd been taken by the weevil, or to what year, and he certainly didn't know when, or if, she was coming back. His half-hearted shrug must have portrayed that as Ianto's face fell.

"I honestly don't know."

"She's beautiful." Gwen smiled as she pulled the blanket over Lacey's sleeping form. "I can't believe she's really Anne."  
"Lacey." Owen corrected smugly. "I won, you got the middle name." He dodged Gwen's playful punch and pulled her away from the sleeping blonde on the couch.

"I never expected to have a twenty-one year old daughter before I was forty." Owen sighed as he stripped off his shirt and trousers to get ready for bed. He paused as Gwen suddenly erupted in to a fit of giggles.

"It's just…so domestic." She couldn't control her laughter. "We're going to sleep at ten on a Friday night and our daughter's asleep in the other room…we're like an old married couple."

Owen smirked mischievously as he pulled her in to bed. "Who said anything about going to sleep?"

"Daughter in the house!" Lacey shouted from under her pillow as she heard Gwen and Owen giggling. Rolling her eyes she pulled on her Converse and silently left the apartment. Once the cold night air hit her she was wide awake, all traces of tiredness gone.

She passed several nightclubs full of rowdy patrons and headed towards the Bay to see Jack. "Change?" She looked up to find a middle aged homeless man in a shabby old coat and long bushy hair.

"You were a weevil." It wasn't a question. The man looked startled.

"I'm human!" He still had the feral gaze in his eye of any low level weevil, yet he indignantly denied ever being turned. Lacey took out a collection of bills and stuffed them in to the polystyrene cup he was clutching in his grubby dirt stained hands.

"No, no you're not." She replied sympathetically and left the startled man to his begging.

The streets were littered with people, hoards of young and old people alike crowding in to bars and nightclubs. Lacey had never seen so many people in the streets before. In her time the population had been much slimmer, with only three billion humans left in the world, most of which lived in the USA. It had taken a while for the infection to spread beyond the UK, but within the decade the infection had spread to Australia, the US and the Middle East. The United Kingdom had become a desolate wasteland inhabited by weevils and a few stubborn northerners who had ignored the UN's quarantine on the dead rock that had once been the great and bountiful English empire. There was no England and no Torchwood.

She'd lived in America with Rhys and Sarah and her older brother, ignorant of Torchwood and weevils. The American president had left the UK to fend for itself, not wanting the infection to spread to his own people; but it came eventually. She remembered Rhys sitting her and her brother down the day the first case had been reported on the news, his kind eyes looking wiser and more burdened than she ever remembered them. By the time she was seventeen her entire family had been killed by weevil attacks. She'd devoted two years of her life hunting and killing any weevil she could get her hands on. It had always been easy. She quickly found she had a knack for finding weevils, for thinking like a weevil, and so she juggled school with hunting and by the time Owen came for her she was two different people. A nineteen year old loner whose life revolved around her pre-med classes, and a merciless hunter who wouldn't think twice about killing a weevil, lower level or not. She'd tried to take out Owen until she'd finally given him the chance to introduce himself; he was lucky Rhys had been open about who her real parents were and what they did.

How would the cure change the future? The world she had grown up in. Would the infection spread beyond the UK? Would she lose her family like she had, or would Owen and Gwen claim her back? None if it seemed to matter as she walked through the bustling streets. She wouldn't be able to get back to her time to find out what had changed and she doubted she'd live long enough to see it. She could feel the tension in the air all around her.

The public were growing wary of Torchwood, losing faith in them as they fought against the conversion of the weevils. They couldn't see how much pain the ex-weevils were in, how confused and tormented they were by their past. They were no longer sons and daughters but killers, and once you were a killer there was no way back, Lacey knew that all too well.

"Miss." She pulled herself out of her thoughts as she heard someone shouting behind her. "Miss, stop!" She turned to find two uniformed cops standing by their car, hands resting on top of their batons.

"What's the problem officer?" She asked confidently, not intimidated by their little metal sticks.

"Miss Cassidy?" Her entire body tensed, torn between the human instinct to flee and the animal inside her telling her to fight. "You need to come with us."

"And what's the charge? Loitering?" She kept them talking, assessing her options. She was close to the Hub but if she didn't get to the spot where perception was altered without losing them then they'd know the base was within range. The authorities had been trying to pinpoint their location for the better part of a year and were already suspicious of the bay.

"Having a smart mouth." One of them pulled the metal baton from it's holster, his stun gun in the other hand. They'd obviously been warned not to play around when trying to pick her up.

"I'd love to kick your ass, but I'm going to let you go." She gave them fair warning as they began to advance on her, laughing at her bravado. They actually thought she was joking. Her adrenaline was racing and her muscles were aching for a fight.

Her eyes widened as one of the officers fell to the floor. Jack stood behind him holding his Webley pistol in his hand and smiling at the other cop. "hey there." He struck him on the head before he could react and frowned at Lacey.

"Picking fights again?"

"It's not my fault I've got one of those faces." She shrugged and nodded down at the unconscious police. "Looks like they're trying the old fashioned way to stop us. Arrest us all. We should call Owen and warn them. Looks like the war's starting."

"Andy." Gwen smiled as she saw her old partner approaching her and Owen. "How's it going?" He didn't smile or wave as Gwen did, he didn't look happy to see her either.

"So it's true then?" He shoved his hands in to the pockets of his cheap suit. "You're with them, you're one of those terrorists." She lost her smile as she felt Owen standing protectively behind her.

"Tell me you're still one of the good guys." She pleaded. "You're not working for that monster Emmerich-"  
"We are the good guys Gwen. I dunno what happened to you, because I thought I knew you Gwen…I mean no one ever trusted Torchwood, swanning around like they owned the place, but I trusted you…looks like I was wrong. Gwen Cooper you're under arrest-" He went to clamp a hand around her wrist but Owen reacted quickly and slammed him against the car, a hand wrapped tightly around his throat and his feet off the ground.

"What makes you think I'm going to let you just lock her up? Hmm?" The young detective was turning purple as he clawed at Owen's hand in an attempt to free himself.

"Owen! No!" She pulled him away, watching as Andy dropped to the ground in a wheezing heap. "You better bloody well listen to me Andy! We are not the bad guys here-"

"It doesn't matter what he thinks!" Owen spat angrily. "Let's get out of here." He took hold of her hand but she stood resolute.   
"Andy-"  
"I'm a cop Gwen, you were once."

"C'mon." Owen growled impatiently.


	30. Chapter 30

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13 (mature theme)

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **I finally found the plan I'd made for the next few chapters, should be more careful with it --; So now that I've found it and finished celebrating my exam results/getting in to uni, I can finally get round to writing again. I plan to have this finished before the end of the month, hopefully. I'm also changing the rating to PG-13, as it will be necessary in the next few chapters.

"Ok people we need a plan and we need it fast!" Jack stood at the front of the boardroom, his very presence demanding attention. "We've got two options. We run or we stay and fight. I need to know you're all willing to ride this things out." Owen and Lacey looked outraged at the suggestion that they would flee, but Gwen looked deep in thought.

"Gwen?" Jack was never one to miss anything. She looked up, realising she'd been caught out.

"You've all been part of Torchwood for years. I've only been here a few weeks and back in the past I'd only been there six months. I never signed up to die for people who couldn't give a damn about me. The public hate us, so why bother?" She could see Jack's jaw tightening and felt Owen let go of her hand.

"We-" She put a finger to Owen's lip to silence him and smiled that reassuring, everything's alright smile that she reserved for the gravest of situations.

"There's only one thing we can do." She informed them all matter-of-factly. "We need someone one the inside."

The others sat in a stunned silence. They had all honestly expected her to tell them all to give up. She smiled, quite pleased with herself. "You all thought I was giving in didn't you?" She beamed. "If I can convince the people who know me best then convincing Emmerich won't be a problem. She offered me a job, it's about time I accepted."

"We take them down from the inside." Owen nodded with understanding, liking the idea of getting one up on Emmerich and her organisation.

"If they suspect you they'll kill you." Jack interrupted Gwen's gloating with a sentence that sent the others crashing back down to reality. They looked from Jack's steely gaze to Gwen's determined glare.

"They've killed too many of us already." She reminded him. "If we don't take this chance they could kill us all."

"Not me." Jack shrugged, earning a small grin from Gwen. He'd always confided in her from starting Torchwood, and for the first time since she'd arrived the past really did feel like years ago. It was true she had only been with Torchwood a matter of months but she felt as though she really were her future incarnation; the woman who loved Owen Harper, was mother to a beautiful nine month old baby and had devoted the last three and a half years of her life to Torchwood.

"Be careful." He added by way of giving his permission. "I don't want to bury you a second time."

After Jack and Lacey left the room to talk to their contacts within the British Alien Defence squad, Gwen finally demanded the truth from Owen concerning her death.

"How did it happen? I mean was I killed fighting for Torchwood or was it natural causes? If I died from an illness then I could be dead again in three years!"

Owen looked up sheepishly from his hands and sighed. He knew that one day she would need to know, he couldn't hide it from her forever. He still hoped to delay it. "It wasn't natural causes." Once he'd been silent for a few moments Gwen realised he wasn't going to tell her.

"Tell me!" She shouted, ignoring the wince from her lover. "I deserve to know how I died!"

"It'll destroy you." Owen mumbled grumpily, still finding his hands fascinating.

"Why?" She knelt down beside him to look him in the eye, pulling his hands in to hers. It was only then as she saw his swollen red eyes and felt droplets of water hitting her hands that she realised he was crying. "Owen-" He pulled his hands free and wrapped his arms tightly around her in a crushing hug.

"You were so sick by the end." He began, his breath tickling against her skin as his head was buried in her chest. "Ianto was dead, Toshiko was mental and Lacey was on her way to losing it…you were just tired. Fed up with being treat like a guinea pig…"

"Go on." She urged when he stopped to look up at her, she could guess where he was going but didn't want to admit it.

"We found you in the lab, me and Lacey, you were just lying there with your eyes closed, like you were sleeping…" He trailed off again and broke down sobbing. "You'd taken all of Toshiko's sedatives…"

Lacey put down the phone as she saw Gwen storming out of the boardroom towards her, tears running down her cheeks. Without explanation her mother hugged her as though she were about to disappear forever. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She mumbled, clinging to her daughter.

"It's ok." Lacey closed her eyes, the image of finding her dead mother still burnt in her mind. "She hadn't cried, as usual she'd buried all her feelings down deep, concentrating on keeping her father from ending his own life and trying to remind Toshiko of who she was. Jack had offered her a shoulder to cry on at the funeral but she'd refused it and stood tall, holding a sobbing Toshiko as Owen stared blankly at the metal catacomb that his fiancée had been placed in for her final resting place. "I forgive you, mom."


	31. Chapter 31

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13 (mature theme)

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"You honestly expect me to believe you." Emmerich frowned, her brow creasing beneath her long blonde hair.  
"You can if you want." Gwen shrugged, her eyes still bloodshot and her cheeks stained from crying. "What you can believe is I've had the shittest day. My old colleague Andy accused me of turning my back on the force and tried to arrest me and to top it off I've just found out that I killed myself." Emmerich looked baffled by the statement as Gwen collapsed in to a chair in front of her desk.

"I'm not the Gwen you know." She looked darkly in to her eyes, all traces of weakness gone. "I was abducted from two thousand and seven, brought here and lied to for weeks. Well I'm sick of it. I've only been in Torchwood six months and I sure as hell don't want to be the next one who dies." Emmerich looked thoughtful as she took in the appearance of the dishevelled woman.

"Welcome aboard. If you go with Franklin he'll give you a tour and get you fitted up for a uniform." She smiled warmly as Agent Franklin led the troubled woman out of the office.

"Do you trust her?" Agent Romney, the man whose arm Owen broke, stepped from the back of the office and addressed her. "It could be a ploy." Emmerich shrugged and ran a hand through her hair.

"We'll see."

Gwen followed the agent around the building Torchwood had earlier broken in to and listened silently as he explained where everything was. She nodded every so often until they arrived back at Emmerich's office. "Gwen." She smiled, Romney gone from the room. "I'm guessing your not staying with Owen. We'll get you an apartment as soon as we can. For now you can stay with me." Gwen nodded, not taking her eyes off the floor.

"You're quiet." Emmerich pointed out as she handed her a glass of wine. Gwen took it thankfully and sipped it before sighing.

"There's nothing to say really, I've lost three years of my life, Rhys has his own family and I'm alone." The other woman looked further convinced by her feeling for Rhys. "Before Owen brought me here Rhys and I were in love, now he's gone."

"You'll get through it. You're back on track" Emmerich grinned as Gwen continued to look away from her. "Working with me again. We can bring down Torchwood this time."

Gwen's eyes widened as she took in her words. "What do you mean again?"

"You started working for me three months before you died. You came to me and promised to help bring down Torchwood. How do you think we caught Toshiko Sato? You told us where she'd be. She was the only one who could give us the access codes we needed." Emmerich placed a reassuring hand on the other woman's shoulder. "They told me you'd killed yourself, I never believed them. I mean what would they have done if Toshiko had been lucid enough to tell them who lured her to us? I won't let them hurt you again…more wine?" She went off to the kitchen to fetch the bottle, leaving Gwen alone to contemplate the situation.

She was trying desperately not to believe her, but how could she be sure? She'd never imagine betraying Jack and the others but she'd never imagine she could kill herself either; and yet she had done one or the other. Had she been the cause for Toshiko's torture? Did she betray the people she was supposed to love? Her fiancé and her own daughter? Had they killed her for it? Her mind was full of unanswered questions and no way to get her answers. Toshiko was dead, so she could not ask what had led to her capture, and if she asked Lacey or Owen and they suspected she knew what had happened would they kill her too?


	32. Chapter 32

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Huge apologies for the wait. To cut a long story short technology hates me, and my 80Gb hard drive is nothing more than an attractive paperweight. I lost pretty much every piece of fic/writing that wasn't posted, which was a few chapters of TotW so had to rewrite them along with a few other things I'm working on.

"But sir, there are British citizens in- Yes sir, no sir. Understood." Emmerich hung up the phone and sighed, causing Gwen to fidget nervously as she stood in front of her desk.  
"Everything alright?"

The woman shook her head, causing strands of hair to fall loose from her ponytail. "Let's just say you chose a good time to switch sides." She looked troubled by what her superior had told her over the phone but Gwen could not press for details for fear of spooking her. Catching Gwen's wary gaze she smiled and pulled out a CD-Rom. "Time to start earning your keep. There are over five hundred names on this list. I need you to check if they've been admitted to hospital or arrested in the last two weeks."

"Weevil or human?" The questioned slipped out as though she were back at Torchwood questioning Jack when he asked her to check someone out on various national databases.

"Human." Emmerich scowled, obviously not used to being questioned by a subordinate. "Pretty soon weevils will be a thing of the past. We've already returned over fifty percent of the weevil population to their former selves. This is just a routine check up to make sure they're fitting in. Here at the British Alien defense squad we care Gwen." She smiled as the well rehearsed line left her lips and ushered her out of her office and in to a smaller office across the hall where three other workers sat at computer terminals running the same checks.

"Took your time." Owen smirked as Lacey finally got in to the SUV and slung her book bag in to the back. She winced as she hit the computer screen that was attached to the chair Toshiko had always sat in. "It'll get easier kiddo."

"Really?" She quizzed, not able to imagine a day when the loss of Toshiko would not still be fresh on her mind. "Or are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

"That's what dad's are for." He draped an arm around her in a crush in hug until she pushed him away, embarrassed at hugging him while her classmates from university were walking past the car; even though to them an older attractive man was simply hugging her. "I'm not going to lie. You're not going to suddenly wake up one morning and everything's going to be hunky-dory, but it will get a little easier eventually. I prom-" His sentence was cut short by an ear splitting explosion nearby.

They simultaneously looked up to see part of the university in flames. Lacey tried to get out of the car but Owen pulled her back and pointed across the street where a man in a parked car sat with a camera trained on them. "I think it's time we left."

By the end of Lunch every newspaper and television network were covering the 'terrorist' attack on the university. As Gwen sat at her desk finishing off her lunch she noticed a 'breaking news' alert on the Internet homepage her computer was on. Clicking the link she looked in horror, as a picture of Lacey appeared on the screen with the accompanying article 'Med Student kills eight'. She scanned the page curiously. It claimed Lacey had left an explosive device in the office of the head of the medical department; a man who'd worked with the government developing the so-called cure for weevilism.

She knew arguing Torchwood would never kill a man because of who he worked for would be naïve, but they would never risk the lives of innocent students to get to him. She suddenly knew what Emmerich had been uneasy about earlier. She knew the explosion was going to happen. It was a way to make Torchwood seem like the enemy in the eyes of the public. A respected doctor and five innocent students were dead, and Torchwood was getting the blame.

She wanted to phone Lacey to check she was safe with Jack and Owen but she knew that it could easily be a rouse to get her to break her cover. She kept her mobile in her pocket and continued working, praying her shift would end quickly. After resuming her work she began to notice a pattern emerging in her searches of the previous weevils. Out of the four hundred she'd already processed three in five of them had died in hospital and a further one in five in police custody after being arrested for a violent crime.

Emmerich glanced up from her paperwork as Gwen stormed in to her office. "They're dying aren't they? The people who were turned back in to humans. Only ten percent of them are living and most of them are violent!"

"Actually it's more like twenty percent that are living and yes some of them are having trouble returning to society, being turned in to vicious animals can have a bad effect on the psyche."

"Then you have to stop changing them!" Gwen demanded angrily.

Emmerich shook her head. "Two living humans are worth more than eight dead weevils Gwen."

"People will realize what's going on!"

"No, they won't. After all cause of death has been listed as murder. The powerful shady organization known as Torchwood will be blamed. By this Friday the British Alien defense squad will have rounded up every last weevil and forced them to be turned. The weevil threat will be erased. And _we'll_ have won." She stressed her choice of words as though reminding Gwen where her loyalties now lay.


	33. Chapter 33

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"We need to act now people!" Jack slammed his hand on his desk as he hovered in front of it, worry evident all over his face. "If we don't destroy this 'cure' every weevil in the United Kingdom will be hunted down and turned by Friday."

"What do we do?" Gwen quizzed, glad to be back in the Hub among friends. The office she worked in at the British Alien Defense Squad seemed too clean and sterile and the people too normal. Sitting in Jack's office with the paint peeling and her twenty one year old daughter beside her Gwen felt right at home.

"If Lacey can find a way to get in to their security systems we can get the details we need. Building plans, work shifts, access codes, the whole package. We destroy their research and make sure they can't recreate it. I'm warning you all though, the public aren't on our side anymore." Jack looked at them sternly. "There'll be no going back after this."

"In for a penny and all that." Owen got to his feet and took over from Jack. "Lacey work with Gwen and start trying to hack their system. We've got one day to get organized; if we strike on Thursday night they'll have cells full of weevils. A couple of commands from me and we've got our own private army. We're all that's left of Torchwood, so we need to pool our resources and above all trust each other. So let's get started then. We do this for Ianto and Tosh yeah?"

Gwen remained silent as the others cheered heartily, catching their attention. "I don't know if I can trust you." She finally admitted, unwilling to live in fear of what could have happened anymore. She needed to know one way or the other. "Emmerich told me that I worked with her before, the me from this time. I betrayed you all and you found out when Tosh was taken. I'm the reason Toshiko's dead aren't I?" Gwen shrieked, finally giving in to the anger and fear she'd been harboring for the past few days. "I was the one who told Emmerich where she'd be…I turned on you all and you killed me."

"No!" Lacey's voice was quiet but filled the silent room. "It's my fault Tosh was caught and it's my fault she's dead… We'd been arguing that night. She called me immature… so I did the mature thing and stormed off. I left her on her own and she was caught on her way home. I was a stupid immature kid and I've been paying for it ever since."

"Emmerich lied to you." Owen added. "You went undercover inside their organization but you never turned your back on us. You broke your cover trying to save Tosh and you were caught too. We didn't tell you earlier how you died because we knew you'd react this way. What you did…" He paused as though trying to find the right words to stop her toppling over the edge. "You were a mess Gwen. I was mad at you for a long time but I forgave you. We all forgave you. That's all in the past now. Right now the only thing that matters is ending this for good!"

"We're a family Gwen." Jack smiled, not his dazzling white pearly grin but a subdued reassuring smile. "We stick together. And we definitely don't kill each other…often."


	34. Chapter 34

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"So this is it." Owen sighed, taking a seat beside her as she sat watching water pour in to the basin. "Everything we've worked towards for the past three years. If we can expose the British Alien defense unit for who they are, show the world what they've done and then we can be the good guys again. We can win this."

"Then what?" Gwen asked as she shifted closer to rest her head on his shoulder. "We keep fighting them?" She felt him move as he shook his head in response.

"No. I've had it with running Gwen." He sighed heavily. "We clear our names and then we settled down somewhere. You, Lacey and me. Start somewhere new and get Lacey back in to a university she hasn't been accused of blowing up."

"Sounds nice." She mumbled, the words muffling against her shoulder. "It's not going to happen though is it? There's no guarantee tomorrow will work. Anyone of us could die, or all of us." Owen didn't reply. He sat silently staring as the water trickled tranquilly in to the basin.

"She's giving up again." Lacey sighed as she watched her parents comforting each other. "She's going the same way she did before she killed herself."

"She won't do it again." Jack protested sternly. "She's got fight left in her yet. Just focus on getting us in tomorrow."

"Already done." Lacey handed him a CD-Rom with a smug grin. After only a few hours she'd devised a program to get them in to the system undetected with a little bit of help from Gwen.  
"Tosh would be proud."

"Don't." She scowled. "I can barely get through each day as it is. I don't need to be reminded of her everyday. I don't need to be told how proud she would be of me or how much she loved me. Just because she's dead doesn't mean I've forgotten those things." Jack nodded and patted her shoulder.

"I'm proud of you sweetheart. You've put up with things that would break most people and you're still strong. Don't fall apart on me yet, okay?" She nodded as she watched Owen wrap his arms around Gwen and sighed. She didn't know how much longer she could cope without Toshiko to keep her going.

Eventually Gwen made her way up to where Jack and Lacey stood and took the CD she needed. After going over the plan a few times she pulled her daughter in for a tight hug. "I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you too, mom. I'll see you tomorrow." She pulled away and went in search of Owen to go over the details for the plan.

"If this doesn't work… I'm not a weevil, I'm not super strong or immortal, so if anything happens …look after her Jack." Gwen pleaded, her gaze troubled as her own mortality weighed heavily on her.

"As if she were my own." He promised. "She's a handful though. I'll need your help…we're not losing another member of this team Gwen. Your job's to get us in to the system, after that you get straight out. No heroics Gwen, understand?"

"Understood."


	35. Chapter 35

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

**A/N: **Finally got this chapter typed up! Work and Uni are conspiring to stop me having any free time! I'm off from uni for over a month so should be able to get a lot written…hopefully.

"Hello Gwen, settling in?" Gwen forced herself

"Fine." She shrugged. "Paperwork's not really my thing. Bit boring to be honest…after Torchwood."

"Give it a couple of months. We'll have you field ready in a couple of months." She squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. She smiled again ad waited for her to leave before turning back to her computer screen. She'd inserted the disk Lacey had given her and took a deep breath before initiating the programme. Slipping out her phone she texted a single word to Lacey, '_go'_.

"You know where she is." Jack looked up as Owen entered his office. "Tell me where she is. Now!" He held his gun steady in one hand and waited for Jack to reply. He casually put down his pen, ignoring the gun, and sighed.

"She's safe. That's all I know."

"Don't give me that cryptic bullshit!" The gun began to twitch in his overly tight grip. "Just bring her back, now!"

"I can't!" Jack was losing his patience. "I don't know where or when she is, but I know she's with Torchwood, and I would never let anything happen to her.

"And I would?" Owen shouted angrily. "I-"

"Don't." Jack glared up at him. "I had to tell her fiancé that she was away on a national emergency…if she's not back by Monday I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to tell him!" Owen dropped his gun, guilt evident all over his face.

"She has to come back." He slumped to the floor, clutching his knees to his chest. "Has to." He mumbled, intently staring at Jack's desk as though Gwen was about to pop out of it.

Owen didn't need floor plans or signs to know where the cells that kept the weevils were. Apart from having intimate knowledge of the inside of the cells he could sense his kin nearby. He felt their frustration and anger at being caged, but above all else he could feel their fear. They all knew what was going on. Whether higher or lower level they knew they were a dying breed. As he grew closer he felt something else in the air; a kind of nervous excitement. His own mood was being picked up on by those in captivity. They knew he was coming for them.

The two agents guarding he numerous overcrowded cells seemed to be tuned in to the unsettled atmosphere. As Owen approached them, wearing a standard issue black suit, they looked warily at him. "Who are you?" One of them barked out as the other checked his perfectly forged I.D.

"I'm here to cover your break

"What break-" Owen grabbed the nearest guard and slammed him face first in to the door of a nearby cell, eliciting wails of excite from its occupants. As the first agent went down the second tried to run for the alarm, but Owen was faster than the overweight man. He charged at him and crashed in to him like a bowling ball knocking down the last skittle.

They both slammed in to the last cell door in the corridor, but only Owen got back to his feet. After shaking himself off he took the keys from the guard and stood in front of each door, trying to find what he needed. Eventually he opened three doors ad let out the three higher level weevils that were among the four dozen weevils. He knew two of them personally and had briefly met the third, a young brunette who Gwen had disliked. "Alright. You know what to do. Split in to three teams, control your group, no one's to get hurt." Owen commanded. "Cover the exits, get people out, but let no one in." The three leaders nodded as they set about releasing the other captives. Within minutes an army of angry weevils were marching out of the basement like conscripted soldiers, begrudgingly following the commands of their superiors.

Owen left them to it and headed to the laboratory where Jack and Lacey had already infiltrated. The young blonde stood staring at the blood samples that were being kept in a glass refrigeration unit. "That's all they have." Jack whispered, thankful the lab was generally empty. "We destroy these and it's over."

"No it's not." Lacey sighed, her eyes glazed over.

"They can take more…they will take more. We both know this can only end one way." Jack placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

"It's not going to end that way." He spoke confidently, reassuring her with his voice. "No one else is dying. I know right now you just want to die, because living without the person you love most is too damn hard…but you can't. You've got to keep going."

"Hypocrite." Lacey muttered, angry at the lecture he was giving her after taking his own life so many times after Ianto's death.

"I can afford to be a hypocrite. I can't die." Their conversation ended as Owen entered the lab.

"Show time!" Jack plastered his usual smile on to his face and squeezed her hand comfortingly.

"Gwen. Can I see you in my office please?" She froze with her hand on her back.

"I was just on my way out. Can it wait till tomorrow?"

"No." Her tone was sharp and left no room for argument. Gwen's escape plan was quickly going downhill. Gathering her things she left her shared office and headed to Emmerich's. She waited with her hand on the door, considering whether or not she could walk away and get out of the building before Emmerich noticed she was gone.

"After you." She turned to find the agent whose arm Lacey had broke standing behind her. Swallowing hard she opened the door and entered the now familiar office.

"What's up?" She forced her tone to be light ad cheery, despite the ominous sense of dread that hung over her. Jack and the others were surely in the building by now. Did Emmerich know they were there? Did she know Gwen had helped them?

"Ready." Owen hovered over Lacey's shoulder as she began the setup process to completely destroy the computer files in the entire British Alien Defence Unit's network. She nodded, her eyes never leaving the screen as her fingers danced gracefully over the keys.

"This is going to set off some major alarms."

"So am I." Owe grinned as his elbow connected with the glass panel covering the fire alarm. Within moments the entire building came alive with the shrill shrieking of the alarm.

In the commotion that ensured no one seemed to notice, or care, that a second alarm had been triggered as a virus ate its way through the computer system.

As people ran for the fire exit they found the weevils waiting to escort them from the building. After collecting two vials of the antidote they began destroying the lab. Smashing containers, destroying equipment and pouring acid over papers and notepads.

After ordering Owen and Lacey to check on the weevils Jack headed to Emmerich's office. He had an old score to settle. Waltzing through the door he grinned at finding her in her office. He lost his grin as he noticed Gwen sitting in front of her. Emmerich's gun was out before the door had time to slam shut behind him. He'd expected it, but he hadn't expected his team member to be there. He could walk away from a bullet. Gwen could not.

"Does anyone ever listen to me?" He scowled at Gwen disapprovingly. "So how's this going to work? We banter, you shoot me, yadda yadda-"

"No." The gunshot rang out in the silent office, loud enough to drown out the fire alarm but not Gwen's scream. She stared wide-eyed at the gun, the smoke still billowing out of the barrel.


	36. Chapter 36

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

The room fell deadly silent as the fire alarm stopped and Emmerich dropped the gun to the ground.

"Thank you." Gwen choked out as the agent behind her took his last breath and fell from his chair.

"We need to get to the roof. Owen and Lacey are meeting us up there."

"No Emmerich interrupted. "The fire alarm will have the police on the way. They'll send helicopters. The only way out is underground."

Jack looked sceptically at the woman who had caused the deaths, indirectly or otherwise, of half of his team. "Why should we trust you?"

"Because out of the four of you left only one of you can survive being shot." Emmerich stared him down and eventually he relented.

"I'll go get the others. You hurt her and I'll kill you." He scowled before tossing his Webley to her. "I'll be straight back."

He stepped out the elevator on the floor of the lab when he heard the first approaching sirens. Obviously Owen and Lacey had heard them too. They came running out of the ruined lab and crashed in to him. "Looks like we've got to get to the roof-"

"No." Jack interrupted. "New plan." He led them back in to the lift, not telling them what the new plan was.

"I'm sorry." Gwen looked up as Emmerich started talking. "I made a lot of bad choices. I thought I was doing the right thing. Trying to cure those poor people who had been turned." She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. "I just caused them more pain. I was so happy to have a cure that I didn't care that some weren't adjusting to their renewed humanity."

"What changed?" Only two hours earlier her attitude towards the survivors had been impassive and uncaring. Gwen looked at the other woman and noticed that in her panic at being called in to the office she had overlooked Emmerich's appearance. She no longer looked like the hot shot confident entrepreneur. Her eyes were red and framed by heavy shadows and she looked burdened.

"When I made detective I was partnered with Mike Gibson. He was a great cop, family man and all that. He was infected when a Weevil attacked me." Gwen had met Gibson before, he was a good officer. She wasn't surprised by his self-sacrifice for his partner. "I became obsessed with trying to help him. That's how I ended up running this place. He was cured three days ago. He killed himself an hour ago, as well as his wife and kids."

"It wasn't your fault." The words left Gwen's mouth, trying to provide the other woman with comfort, but she wasn't even sure she believed them herself. She could understand why Emmerich had become so determined to rid the world of weevils, but she couldn't forget the suffering she had caused. Before either woman could speak again Jack and the others walked through the door.

"I don't trust her." Owen voiced his opinion loudly as usual, but the sirens were growing louder.

"Duly noted. Now follow her."

Emmerich went to her computer and started entering the security code she needed to access the elevator to the basement. "I've brought the lift online, but there's a problem. I can't override the fire alert protocols. It won't come up past the ground floor."

"Which is currently full of weevils and armed police." Jack pointed to one of the security monitors in the corner of the office.

"I can't control the weevils." Owen warned. "They're pissed and they know they're facing extinction."

"The police will shoot anything that moves." Emmerich added. "It's going to be a free for all down there."


	37. Chapter 37

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"Stay in formation." Jack ordered as they made their way down the several flights of stairs towards the lobby. He and Emmerich led the way with Gwen in the middle and Lacey and Owen covering the rear. Gwen was the only one who wasn't armed so the others had to keep her safe.

One flight from the lobby they found a stray weevil. He sat at the bottom of the stairs, his clothes stained in blood and the body of a dead security guard lay in front of him. It looked up from its quarry and snarled, it's fangs bared and it's expression one of anger. Owen pushed his way to the front of the group and growled at it. "Move." It snarled right back. Owen was right, the blood lust and the mob mentality had blocked out his presence and authority. He no longer had control over the lower level weevils. Jack raised his gun but Lacey pushed it down and stepped beside her father.

"Move!" She snarled, her eyes dark and her own teeth on show. The weevil hesitated, all predators could sense when they were faced with more powerful beasts than themselves. If weevils were the next step in the evolutionary chain then Lacey was the second. It snarled again but retreated from the stairwell and back in to the lobby. Owen glanced at her with a blank expression.

"I don't know whether to be impressed or scared when you do that."

They silently descended the last few stairs and paused at the door as they heard the sounds of gunfire and snarling weevils. Owen placed a hand on the door and could feel the pulsing anger of the weevils and humans alike. Steadying himself he pushed the door open and stormed in to the chaos. Lacey followed close behind him while Jack and Emmerich covered Gwen.

Inside the lobby was complete chaos. The weevils had barricaded the doors with furniture, but the officers had forced their way through, bodies and office furniture littered the reception. The elevator was on the other side of the large reception room, almost two hundred foot away. Jack kept in front of her as a human shield as they ran for the elevator, Emmerich ran in front of them to get the door open, a couple of nearby weevils went for her, only to be stopped by Lacey pouncing on them. Owen went for a policemen who was shooting at Jack and tackled him to the ground. As the police began to aim at Torchwood Jack took hold of Gwen's arm and pushed her to run as fast as she could. They slid in to the open lift seconds after Emmerich had opened it. "Owen!" Jack shouted impatiently after the others didn't follow them.

Lacey pulled away from the weevils and rushed to grab Owen. He still lay on top of the cop. "C'mon Owen." Most of the cops had retreated but a few were still firing in to the building. He still didn't move. "Dad? DAD!" She dropped to her knees and shook him. He groaned as he came too. Lacey sighed as she helped him to his feet. He'd simply been knocked out when he'd jumped the cop. Suddenly he crouched down beside the unconscious officer and removed his jacket. When he stood up Lacey saw the damp patch in his dark shirt and suddenly recognised one isolated blood scent above all the others in the room. "You were shot?" He zipped up the jacket to hide his wound.

"Don't say a word to the others." He growled as they ran to the elevator. Lacey silently obeyed him.

"Nice of you to join us." Jack snapped as he slammed the button to take them down and the doors creaked closed. The lift led them down in to the sewers below the city. Jack grinned as he realised where they were. There was an entrance to Torchwood not far from where they stood. "Let's move it people!" Gwen and Emmerich followed him as he headed down one of the tunnels. Lacey looked warily at Owen as they slowly paced behind the others. He was pale and his skin was coated in a layer of sweat. The scent of his blood overpowered all other smells in the sewer.

"Hurry up you two!" Owen squeezed her hand as they sped up, he tried to hide the pain on his face, but she could hear his laboured breathing, and his heart pounding against his chest. He needed help, and fast.


	38. Chapter 38

**Title: **Tears of the Weevil

**Rating: **PG-13

**Disclaimer: **Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

"So this is Torchwood then?" Emmerich exclaimed as she took in the sight of the hub. "Impressive." Gwen followed her gaze around the hub, remembering the first time she'd seen the inside of Torchwood. It didn't seem so impressive without Toshiko tapping away at her computer and Ianto milling around in the background, keeping everything running. Now it just seemed like a vast empty shell, imprisoning them all.

"You look like crap." She smiled as Owen approached her. He looked exhausted. His face was etched by time and he looked far older than he was. "Something's wrong." She could tell he was worried.

"It's nothing." He choked out, ignoring Lacey's glare. "I love you Gwen…I wish I'd told you that years ago." Suddenly Gwen realised just how run down Owen was. In three short years he had become an old man, his hair was greying from stress and the lines of time had written his story all over his face. She'd missed the years that mattered most, falling in love with Owen, agreeing to marry him and having his child. She felt a longing in the pit of her stomach.  
"You want to go back." It wasn't a question and he wasn't judging her either. He walked calmly to his desk and unlocked his top drawer. She followed him curiously and found him holding a bright green metal cylinder. "The first device had enough for two trips, but I used it before Jack did. I went back to the past and I took the second device from storage, so Ianto couldn't find it…I didn't want to lose you a second time."

"Why now?" He had seen her upset before, in tears and close to breaking point, what was different this time?

"Why not?" Jack interrupted, saving Owen the pain of an explanation. "This sooner you go back home and stop the infection ever happening the better. What's keeping you here?" Gwen looked from the captain to the blonde sitting quietly beside him. Her daughter wouldn't be there when she got back. It would be like another member had died. "Why don't you go with them? Say goodbye properly kiddo?" Jack wrapped an arm around the blonde's shoulders and whispered something to her. She nodded without looking up and stood between her parents and placed a hand on the sphere. Owen placed his and Gwen's hands on the sphere and the room exploded in a shower of light as time began to be torn away from them.

The experience was all together unpleasant. Gwen felt like she was being pulled in a thousand directions while someone crushed her skull. She couldn't see or feel the others but she could sense they were there. Almost as soon as the sensation started it ceased. A new sensation of pain filled her body as they slammed to the ground. Owen grunted as he fell to the ground on all fours. The pain and the process of returning had forced him to retreat to his instinctive state and so when Toshiko looked up from her workbench she found a strange blonde woman and a weevil surrounding Gwen, who had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere.

"Jack!" Her weapon was out of its holster before the words had left her mouth. Gwen broke out in a large grin. She was home. Finally after months in the future, away from the life she knew, she was finally home. Her happiness was short lived however as she heard Owen's whimpering. As he gasped in pain a tuneless yet mournful whistle like sound errupted around them. The weevils in the cells below, and what seemed like all the weevils in Cardiff, began to cry for their father. They could sense his pain as his life force began to dwindle. "Owen? Oh my god, what's wrong?"

Dropping to her knees she tried to see what was wrong. The pain in Owen's abdomen was unbearable and his vision had become blurred from losing so much blood. The shirt on his back, made all the more tighter in his weevil form, clung to him from a mixture of sweat and blood. Finally the last of his strength gave way and he collapsed to the floor, panting for breath. Gwen moved as carefully as she could and peeled the jacket from him revealing the blood soaked shirt below. "Just hang on, you're going to be ok. We'll fix you up and send you back good as new…" She trailed off as he released the sphere from his hand and it rolled out in to the room. It's eerie green glow had been lost and it simply sat like its counter part had in the future, devoid of colour of power.

"I'm sorry." His words were strained as each one felt like it was twisting the bullet inside him. "If I wasn't a weevil I'd be dead by now."

"No." Tears ran down her face as the weevil requiem grew louder. "You can't be dying, what about Lacey? She's stuck here, you can't just leave her."

"I knew what I was doing coming here." Lacey finally spoke. "Jack knew this was a one way trip." Gwen shook her head as though if she denied it enough it wouldn't really be happening.

"She's got a pretty damn good mum to keep an eye on her." He smiled as Lacey took hold of one of his hands and Gwen held the other. His tired, weevil eyes looked up as Owen and Jack approached, followed closely by Ianto. "He doesn't…know…how lucky…he is." Owen sighed as his younger self stood rooted to the spot, staring wildly at Gwen as she sat comforting a dying weevil. "To have…my girls." It was the last thing he said before heaving out one last growl. He used every last ounce of life within him to pull the death rattle out. Lacey involuntarily followed suit along with the rest of the weevils in the hub. The others covered their ears as the deafening roar echoed throughout the entire Hub.

As the silence settled over them, for neither human nor weevil made any sound, it seemed to pollute the atmosphere, coating the air with grief.

"What the hell is going on?" As usual Owen was the first to speak. His snarling snapped Gwen away from the body in front of her to the young man standing over her. He looked younger than she ever remembered him. Inexperienced and untouched. Her body acted of its own accord as her arms wrapped around his waist and she pulled him tightly against her. She needed to be strong, for herself and for her daughter, but with Owen standing before her, and the world safe, for now at least, she just wanted to fall apart.

Lacey sat beside her father's body and stared down at the empty shell that had once been her role model. He had saved her from her self imposed isolation and hatred of weevils, shown her how to accept what she was, and to hide it from others. As she looked up at Jack only he seemed to know what was going on, as the all knowing Captain Jack Harkness always did. She knew her true identity would have to be hidden from the others. They wouldn't understand a weevil hybrid, and Owen sure as hell wasn't ready to know he had a daughter who was almost twenty two years old. She looked away from Jack's piercing stare and back down at her father's body. The other weevils in the hub, in the sewers of Cardiff and everywhere else acknowledged their father was gone, but a new authority had arisen. As the first tears of her adult life began to fall she used all her willpower to silence the weevil inside her that screamed for release.

**A/N: **The reference to weevils crying/mourning as a 'tuneless' 'mournful whistle' and knowing when one them has died comes from the book Slow Decay by Andy Lane. I loved his portrayal of weevils and found this description of how they mourn quite fitting. Just got the epilogue to go now!


	39. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood, or anything related to the show.

**Epilogue**

"Lacey! Hurry your arse up!" Owen grumbled as the mattress he had leaning against his back began to lurch forward, threatening to crush him. The grinning blonde bounced to the bottom of the stairs and pushed past him, brazenly taking the mattress and pulling it up the stairs like it as a pillow. Owen shook his head as Toshiko handed him a mug of coffee.

"What the hell do you feed her?" He scoffed as a few moments later she ran down the stairs again to collect more things from the rental van outside.

Toshiko smiled as she watched the blonde wrestle with a duvet. "She certainly is energetic."

"Energetic? She never bloody stops!" The young woman had appeared in their lives only a few days earlier, returning from the future with Gwen.

As Gwen seemed to be cutting herself off from all but the blonde it had been strange when she had asked Toshiko to let Lacey have her spare room until they found something more permanent. Lacey had been happy enough though, especially when Jack had given her a Torchwood credit card to buy furniture and clothes with. They stairs, one pillow jammed between her teeth and another pinned under her arm pit.

"Careful." Toshiko lifted up the trailing duvet and tucked it back securely in Lacey's hands.

Owen frowned as he watched the blonde's gaze avert Toshiko's smiling face and mumble a quick 'thanks' before darting up the stairs. "There's somick not right about her." He whispered, catching Toshiko's attention.

"She's been pulled from her own time Owen, she obviously needs time to settle in." He made a noncommittal grunt to keep her from lecturing him but made a note to find out what he could about the girl. He had to make sure Toshiko was safe living with her. And of course his motives had nothing to do with the way Gwen looked at the younger girl, or the way she fiercely protected her.

"I'm sorry." Gwen clutched the gun in her hands as tightly as she could, afraid that at any moment it might be taken from her. Lacey ignored Gwen, her eyes on the gun. "I'm so, so, sorry."

End.

**A/N: **Coincidentally I've finished exactly a year after I started writing this. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, or even just got this far. I'm writing a sequel which will probably be called Sins of the Weevil. It'll focus on how Gwen adjusts back in her own time and the consequences of her actions in the future.

Trufreak.


End file.
